2013 BMe Leadership Award Winners from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.

Several groups of black males were spotted today near you, helping to build, protect and educate the community. The groups were spotted in Detroit, Philadelphia and Baltimore and ranged in ages from 19 to over 60.  The only thing the men apparently had in common was a personal commitment to the well-being of other people’s children, strangers, and neighbors.

A total of 50 men were spotted by BMe: “The network of inspired black men and their friends” and awarded a total of $600,000 in small grants paid for by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Open Society Foundation’s Campaign for Black Male Achievement. The men weren’t awarded the grants just for what they do, but for who they are and what they represent. Related Links

View BMe Leadership Award winners in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Detroit

They represent our chance to live in communities where people look out for each other, turn their talents into income, vacant lots into playgrounds, hopelessness into confidence, and death into new life.

These 50 BMe Leaders are among 400 other BMe Brothers who applied for funding and are also making a difference. Those 400 hundred are part of over 3,000 black men who have posted video testimonials of things that they consistently do to make a difference. All of whom do so simply because they can and because they care.

Now that BMe exists, we invite anyone of any race or gender to connect to local men like these on the interests that we share in common. Whether its youth development, entrepreneurship, health, education, homelessness, the environment and more we can each do our part and do even more together.

So nominate the inspired black men in your own life to join the network. Share the news and videos about BMe Brothers. Attend the events and participate in the projects they lead. Invite them to work with you if they don’t already.

Or you can do the easiest thing imaginable. Click through the site to enjoy story after story that reveals the hearts of men like these. Then join us.

Love & Power.

By Trabian Shorters, BMe Founder