i am you 360 It was started in late 2013 by Desiree Cook who decided to use her experience to help the community. Cook’s previous struggles with addiction led her to jail and her children to be placed in her foster home. She also went through her homelessness before deciding to reinvent herself.

In its first few years, the group’s focus was on preparing and providing customized hygiene bags for children and teens in foster care, but in recent years, it has expanded to include a Efforts are expanding to include residential solutions.

2021, Tucson developer Louis Blass crest contract He allowed Cook to use a renovated apartment complex that ten young people of various backgrounds and ethnicities call home. They meet regularly for classes that teach life skills and personal development, and have worked together to grow vegetables in the on-site community garden.

An apartment is a safe and temporary option, but Cook’s dream plan is to buy a property and build a small home village all over Tucson.

The idea is to buy land and pay half of the $1 per square foot rent for each resident on a 450 square foot house, who deposits it in a savings account that can later be used as a down payment. A starter home of their own when they are ready to move in.

In March, Cook built the first village on a vacant lot that had been vacant for decades, adjacent to I am You’s eastern office. The community center and he five of the nine houses had their foundations laid and walls erected. This is thanks to Blass and Crest Contracting, which works with Cook on a pay-as-you-go basis.

“No other contractor will pick us up unless we have the full $1.5 million ready,” Cook said. But Cook’s message resonated with Brass. Brass instructed construction manager Sean Berna to do what he can to help the cause.

Funding for the first five housing and community centers came from the City of Tucson American Relief Plan Act grants, OneAZ Credit Union, and the community. Cook said his four remaining homes were paid for by the community, including local nonprofits, adding that the roof, windows and doors have yet to be funded.

“After five years of development, it is not only humbling to see it come to fruition, but the fact that Arizona (ranked among the top homeless in the nation) makes it necessary. That’s the thing,” Cook said. “We believe strongly in this project.The main reason is whether you invest now or pay later. It will be used for things.”

Cook said I Am You 360 donors can see where their money is going through the group’s social media accounts or by simply driving by.

“The community has helped us get to where we are now, so we feel obligated to see where their money goes,” she said. is ‘our’ effort.”

Cook and Berna hope the remaining four homes will be built this spring, weather permitting.

The next step is roofs, windows and doors, and Cook has now raised $500,000. Crest has other work to do, so he can step away from this project and resume work when funding permits.

In December, Cook received a $5,000 donation from local nonprofit 100+ Teens Who Care Tucson, and earlier this month, Pima County supervisors decided to allocate $5,000 in funds for five house frames and doors. I voted. But Cook still has a long way to go.

She estimates that a total of $800,000 to $1 million still needs to be raised to complete the first village, including roofs, windows, doors, landscaping, irrigation, gazebos, community gardens and water catchments. I’m here. The landscaping will cost $150,000, she said, and Cook hopes to collect in-kind donations such as toilets, sinks and fixtures.

“These children are victims of sex trafficking, human trafficking and the justice system. There are so many pieces that have to go through life just to survive. I pray for a million dollar donor.” I have,” Cook said.

The village includes a 250-square-foot community room for classes, meetings with therapists, and ultimately podcast production.

“The voices of residents can therefore be heard on topics that are relevant to them in terms of their lived experience,” Cook said. is important, but I also know that millions of kids are going through the same thing.It’s huge.”

Construction manager Berna said she enjoys watching the Cook Network and fundraising to make her dreams come true.

“My lived experience really gave me resilience and staying power,” Cook said. I know what it’s like to be childless because I’m being abused, and I think it helps keep my engine revving.”

“All the energy I spent on drug addiction and illegality was now bottled up and transferred to the community.”

Cook believes that because she is an African-American woman, she should have worked harder to build trust. Berna said Brass said the same thing about Cook. It makes me sad because it shouldn’t be the case,” Berna said.

Cook said this was about children and that the population her project supports is a group that is statistically overlooked, so it needs to be shaken off.

“It’s up to us to sew them back into the fabric of our community so we can do better,” she said.

I Am You 360 is already seeing improved results in the apartment complex that will serve as Phase 1 of the project. Cook confirmed that the 10-family model works, so he said he will continue to use it going forward.

“Problems are easier to analyze, easier to integrate. With 10, everyone is accountable,” she said. “You become your guardian within the community.

Cook said two of the original residents left the apartment under positive circumstances. A young woman was able to rebuild a healthy relationship with her mother and returned home. Another resident with family support decided to move in with her sister, believing that someone else needed the program more. I got to the place.

Residents cooked for each other, watched over each other’s children, and celebrated “Friendsgiving.” They take classes in banking, budgeting, self-defense, and more, thanks to her partners in the community who want to help.

“It’s cool to see,” Berna said. “You’re teaching kids who wouldn’t have had the chance to grow up. See, how do they know that? And now they can do it among themselves.

Cook said the experience not only teaches residents how to build relationships, but also bonds them for the rest of their lives.

“We have a very close relationship that we have built with them,” she said. Some just graduated from cosmetology school and passed and got their license, one is a head chef and another is a home health care assistant, which is more than just giving them a home. “

Six months ago, Cook retired from her career as a hairstylist to work full-time on I Am You 360.

In the months that followed, new staff members joined the nonprofit, including 18-year-old Mariah Pfeiffer, who had moved to Tucson from North Carolina with her daughter a few months earlier. For the past two months, she has been working as a health clinic coordinator, serving dozens of families in the area.

“We’re helping so many people, and that’s great,” Pfeiffer said.

Phifer was offered the position by Goodwill Metro. Cook said her lived experience is a perfect fit for her I Am You 360. She also works as her facilitator for her Scouts program in Southern Arizona and attends night school. She hopes to eventually work in a hospital and start a nonprofit for her teenage mother and victims of domestic violence.

“I was running away from[domestic violence]relationships, so I came here just to help other young girls like me and help with their self-esteem,” Pfeiffer said. “It feels good for me to be a part of it.”

Jasmine Angulo works as the current resident’s regional liaison and application coordinator for her small home village. She also helps teach I Am Somebody self-development classes.

Anglo, now 21, met Cook when she was 14 through a summer program called Project Pearl.

“Desiree came to me on the last day and said, ‘I think you’ll love this,'” said Angulo, referring to the I Am You 360 class curriculum. “She would come to the Boys and Girls Club I used to go to every week and train me for an hour each week. We could have 360 ​​classes. Straight.”

Angulo said she’s been involved ever since she took on a “big girl job” at the nonprofit about a month ago.

“It’s really exciting to give back to my community in a great way and to get paid for it,” she said. Said. “Desiree likes to hire young people who always want to give back and it empowers the whole person.”

Angulo is tasked with reviewing dozens of applications for small home villages and Phase 1 apartments. Some are put on a waitlist, and if the applicant is not a good fit, resources and words of encouragement are provided to close the interaction on a positive note.

“Tucson is full of resources,” Angulo said. “We’re not trying to reinvent anything, we’re just trying to help people. When we can’t help, someone in the community can help them.”