Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.202 | feat. Hasan Stephens from Good Life Youth Foundation

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Hassan Stevens on Good Life Youth Foundation: Hip-Hop, Entrepreneurship, and Helping High-Risk Youth Thrive Matt Masur of Good News York interviews Hassan Stevens, a Bronx native and former radio/TV personality (Hot 97.9, Power 106.9, NewsChannel 9) who founded the Good Life Youth Foundation after the media industry downsized. The nonprofit serves high-risk, system-involved, and struggling students in Syracuse and ESM schools, using hip-hop culture to connect youth to entrepreneurship as a “survival framework” to help them thrive long-term and reduce recidivism. The organization runs programs and studios at 101 Wyoming Street (music, content creation, photography, and promotional printing) and has helped students graduate and attend college, including Syracuse University and OCC. Stevens shares funding needs, upcoming fundraisers (Aug 12 golf tournament with Impel, Aug 27 Love Handles event, Oct 3 gala at The Mitzvah), partnerships (Micron, Annie E. Casey Foundation, NYS OCFS), and a $3.2M capital campaign to create a hip-hop youth entrepreneurship center. He also discusses his ventures That Good Media and Hippoh Nation apparel with NFC-enabled hoodies. 00:00 Thriving For Life 00:21 Meet Hassan Stevens 01:05 From Radio To Purpose 02:02 Good Life Youth Mission 02:53 Youth Success Stories 03:32 Entrepreneur Paths For Kids 04:18 Studios And Startup Skills 05:08 Scale And Funding Challenges 06:18 Breaking Into Industries 07:44 How To Support The Program 09:00 Partners And National Model 10:39 Referrals And Prevention Gap 13:21 Hip Hop Center Vision 15:30 Hassan The Entrepreneur 18:07 Final Plugs And Farewell 18:56 Support Good News York

We want to teach you how to take the innate qualities that you already possess, as well as the learned qualities from your forced lived environments and teach you how to thrive. And that's really what it's about. It's like, we're going to teach you how to thrive and sustain yourselves for the rest of your life so that you never have to think about doing a negative thing again. Hey, folks, Matt Measier from Good News, York. How are you? This is an awesome episode because I'm joined by a buddy of mine. Hassan Stevens. Now, I met this gentleman a couple of years ago, and I'm very excited to interview you because over that period of time, the more that I've seen, the more I've learned, you just become more and more interesting and impressive. So I'm very excited to kind of dig deep and share with the world a little bit of your background and then especially your organization.

And that's really what we're here to talk about. But let's dive right in. Welcome to the show, Hassan. Appreciate that, man. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you could, give people just a quick, you know, the quick bio, you know. How did you end up here? Well, you know, I'm originally from New York City, from the Bronx, New York. I came up here to do radio and TV. So on-air personality, DJ Maestro for Hot 1079, Power 106.9, news channel 9. And then the industry just kind of imploded. Eyeheart, which was Clear Channel kind of downsize. It's still downsizing. And then I had to reinvent myself. And I thought about like, What do I do next? And it was pay it forward.

A lot of the experiences I had were mentors, people that kind of guided me and kept me from falling prey or victim to the circumstances and environments that I grew up in. I grew up in a horrible neighborhood, Edenwall projects in the Bronx, experienced lots of poverty and just said, you know, what can I do for other youth to not have to experience that? And so afterwards, I created the organization, the Good Life Youth Foundation. Wow. Yeah. Good Life Youth Foundation. I love that. I love that name.

It's just an instant positivity, you know. What does this organization do? So we work with the highest risk youth population in schools, in the community. So sometimes what people would term as gang affiliated or system-involved youth. But we also work with those youth in the schools that are experiencing challenges around behavior, attendance, and grades. We use hip-hop culture as a vehicle to connect youth to entrepreneurship. and we use entrepreneurship as a survival framework. So it's not like, hey, we just want to teach you to start businesses.

We want to teach you how to take the inequalities that you already possess, as well as the learned qualities from your forced-lived environments and teach you how to thrive. And that's really what it's about. It's like, we're going to teach you how to thrive and sustain yourselves for the rest of your life so that you never have to think about doing a negative thing again. And we've been pretty successful, man, helping the reduction of youth for citizens. RITivism rates here in Syracuse in Onondaga County. We've tons of graduates.

So, you know, this year we had 10 graduates across the stage, move on to, you know, college, youth that have never even thought about going to college before. We've got youth up at Syracuse University, Whitman School, some at OCC. And so we just continue to push youth not really to, to, for what we can do, what they can do for themselves. Like, show them what do you possess that allow you to thrive? I love this from so many angles. It's such a neat thing.

One of the things that immediately, as an entrepreneur myself, I'm immediately curious, what are some of the things that these young people are interested in? What are some of the businesses that, you know, after you kind of show them the ways of the entrepreneur, where are they headed? You know, it's funny because when you talk to kids, every time we ask a kid what they want to do, they want to be a rapper, they want to be a football player, particularly the boys, right, or a basketball player. And so a big part of what we've done is expose them.

The exposure is huge because we want to expose them. And even if those are the fields you want to go into, what are the other components? So like, hey, who's the entertainment lawyer behind the rapper? Who's the producer, the engineer, all of those different things? And we've gotten kids to really expand their thoughts and perspectives on what they want to be, which is really, really great. But a lot of the kids, we have a space over at one-on-one Wyoming Street. It's the old pro-literity space. inside we have a full-service music production studio.

We've got a content creation studio where, you know, we're teaching kids how to do the very thing that you do. Podcasting and in a photography studio. And then we have a full-service promotional print company. So we do apparel. We do promotional items. Wow. And we're teaching kids how to start their own clothing brands.

So a lot of our kids have started clothing brands. Some kids are doing lawn care. And we have a vending machine company, so kids are doing vending. So whatever is easy entry, because we're also talking about youth. Yeah. How do you break into a market and start generating revenue without having to need a ton of resources? That's what we're trying to teach them to do. Wow.

Yeah. That's so neat. Yeah, thank you. That's so neat. How long you've been doing this? So the agency's 13 years old. Been doing a little bit longer. It took a couple of years to kind of get it off the ground.

And, you know, it's been going really, really well, man, to the point where, you know, nationally recognized, recognized by the states. But, you know, doing some good work. Wow. That's incredible. About how many youth are you able to serve kind of at one time? This past year, we were actually a little bit down. We served roughly 260 youth. So we're in seven different schools.

Yeah, we try to touch as many as possible. A lot of it comes from our schools. We're in seven different schools, two different school districts, ESM and Syracuse City School District. And then we also work with the county courts, probation, all of that. So this past year we served about 260. Previous year we served roughly 350, but one of our programs is kind of in limbo right now, just because funding across the nation has really been an issue for a lot of nonprofits. So we're seeking funding now to get our hip-hoppreneurship Academy,

which is the marriage between hip-hop and entrepreneurship. We want to launch that back up again. I love that. And I love how you talk about all the careers that go into an industry. Yeah. Beyond just the face, you know, the superstar. Because I've always thought that no matter what industry you want to get into, there's always a way to get in at some level at one of those positions. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. You know, they think they want to be, you know, the main person at the local TV station,

start with the internship or, you know, some of these positions that you can kind of get your foot in the door and get known in the industry. Right. And I love to hear that, you know, you help folks see that. You can really be a part of this. It's funny you said that because when I started my career with radio and TV, I had applied for six months straight. I was sending my resume.

I mean, I think they got so tired of me over at Clear Channel, which is not I-heart. I sent it in for six months straight, and I finally got an internship position to do the website. I picked up some skills. I was developing websites, and I got in, and I worked my way. I was the first one in and the last one to leave every single day. And that's the type of experience that I wanted to show the kids. So I worked my way all the way up to having a number one time slot and some of the highest ratings on the radio.

And I knew I wanted to be the star, but it wasn't until I had to go through those pieces to get there. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's so cool. Hassan, you talked a little bit about funding. Tell us a little bit about how people can help in some of the different fundraisers that the organization does.

Sure. So first they can visit our website. G-L-Y dot foundation. That's the extension. G-L-Y dot foundation. We have a donate button there. It's really important. We are grateful for any help that we can get,

particularly right now because there's a lull in philanthropic dollars for a lot of nonprofits. And we also have a gala coming up. So on August 12th, I'm sorry, October 3rd, we have a gala. We're doing it at the Mitzpah, the brand new location that just opened up on Jefferson. On August 12th, we have the golf tournament with Impale, the tech company.

And then on August 27th, we're doing a fundraiser with love handles on James Street, where people can support and come in and buy some Froyo, enjoy it for the weather. In fact, they're doing it for that whole month, but the concentrated day is going to be on the 27th from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. So those are a few ways that people can help us. They can also look us up and send donations in. It's greatly needed for any organization right now. Do you partner with any big companies? Do you have any big corporate sponsors that are behind you?

So we just got a grant from Micron. Wow. A lot of what we do, so some of the exposure that we do is like hip hop and STEM. They're really big around the STEM. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, which is one of the largest foundations in the United States around youth and family services. So we're directly partnered with them recognized nationally. They actually fly us around to multiple sites in the country for sites to learn from us. And we're partnered with New York State OCFS. So various counties throughout the state of New York

actually have an immersion experience at our space where they're learning about data, you know, informed outcomes and community engagement and connection. So quite a few. we're always looking for other major companies. Impel has worked with us and donated to us for the last six years. Wow, that's great. So we're always looking for larger organizations that are interested in knowing the impact that we have. So we don't just have a local imprint, you know, statewide and national. And so the dollars that go to support us would really have an impact at a greater level to.

That's really cool. Impel's a great local success story. You know, they started years ago in the Tech Garden. when I had a business there. Shout out to Devin. And I remember they started in the one room, you know, and just grew rapidly and had some really cool technology and some really good strategies. And I love to see them now being a core of downtown with their name on a building and supporting the community. So that's so cool.

Yeah, thank you. Hassan, what should people, if there's somebody in the community that says, I know, I know. this young man that could really use something like this. Is there a way for them to reach out and learn more about your program if they want to be a participant? Yeah, you know, our contact information is on our website. Again, gly.foundation. You know, Matt, sadly, there's not a lot of preventative dollars that we've been able to access. And so, you know, we always say, you know, it's really sad that a kid may have to get into trouble

or may not be performing as well in order to get the services that we provide. So we've been consistently looking for it. And that's part of those donations, the unrestricted dollars that people will donate, allow us to take in kids before they get into trouble, before they, you know, take Veroff on the wrong road. And so we're really focused on that in 2027 to see how we can get kids that are just interested in entrepreneurship. We try to carve out a portion or percentage of our,

referrals from the community. Like, hey, I know a kid who's interested, but just has no time. Because a lot of the kids in Andaga County are just disconnected. There's not a lot of activities and things that reflect them and reflect what they want to do. And so we try to provide that in a positive way to steer them in the right direction.

So we're looking to do more of that, but they can reach out. And if we can provide a space in our entrepreneurship program, we'll do that. I love that. You know, especially with everything happening here in central New York with the population growing and opportunities growing. Absolutely.

For young people to understand how to maybe capture some of those opportunities is truly important. And it's interesting because there's so much economic boom that's happening locally, but I think sometimes people forget the disconnect with a particular population. There are kids that will not have access to these jobs that are coming, unless organizations like Good Life prepare them for that. Sure. Right. There are kids that sometimes can't even leave their two to three block radius for fear of safety.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that they have to necessarily be involved in activity or violence, but because they are associated with certain regional areas, they could be a victim if they travel somewhere else. That is not a free life to live. That's not a positive life to live. So we do a lot of like mitigating conflict and making sure that kids can expose themselves to different opportunities. And that's why it's really that important because the economic boom is not hitting a certain portion of people here, and we want to make sure that it does. Yeah, that's incredible. Hassan, you mentioned other foundations, and that led me to something I was thinking about. Is this something that you modeled against other organizations, or are there similar organizations in other cities that do what you do?

So there's in California, Father Boyle, there's Homeboy Industries. where they use entrepreneurship. They have like a cafe and they take former gang members and work with them. So it's similar. We work with all youth. All of our youth are not gang affiliates.

We work with youth that are at risk. And in Syracuse, we're having some of the highest concentrated poverty levels for African-Americans, Latinos, as well as just youth in general. All of our youth are at risk, right? So we've seen pockets. We've also seen places where they've done hip-hop focus. Ours is a little unique with that.

We're merging hip-hop and entrepreneurship. And so, for example, we're in the process of trying to purchase our space. We're doing a capital campaign for $3.2 million to purchase 101 Wyoming. And we want to turn it into the first hip-hop center for youth entrepreneurship. That's a one-stop shop where kids can get hip-hop mental therapy. they can get mentoring, economic financial literacy, all the different things that they need to be a thriving adult, all in one location,

and be welcomed visually and atmosphere-wise with the culture of hip-hop. And I haven't seen necessarily anything like that yet. So there's a little slight uniqueness in terms of how we're doing it. And I think that's part of a reason why we're becoming a national model and why different cities are looking at what we're doing. that sounds like something that a somebody who's really done well in the industry might really want to throw their their money behind you know

well hopefully hell of a hell of a donation for somebody whose albums I listened to back in the day I don't know I can think of a number of folks that I feel like should put their name all over something like this and and can't pay it forward as you said earlier um Hassan if you uh and we don't have to get into this if you don't want to

but um you're a bit of an entrepreneur yourself right aside from this organization. You want to talk a little bit about any of that? Yeah, sure. I would like to call myself a serial entrepreneur. I have a media and marketing company, that good media, where I also do consulting on a national level. But also I'm the founder and CEO of a clothing brand, Hippo Nation.

And so Hipple Nation is to play on words. The way we spell it is to flip. It encompasses and embodies the culture of hip-hop. but it also is about the animal itself, right? The hippo is the most underestimated animal. When you think of what's the most dangerous animal on the planet, you think of the lion? Sure.

It's actually the hippo. Yeah. Right. And so it's for those people that in their lanes and in their industries are really the ones that you need to keep an eye on, that coming forward with brute force, and before you even recognize them, it's too late. Right. So that's really what the metaphor is.

And we were part of Syracuse surge. part of Inspire or the Tech Garden. We created a hoodie with NFC technology. We have a microchip in our hoodies that allow a connection between consumer base and artists or talent. And so we were one of the first companies to ever do that. Balenciaga did something with NFC microchip, but we have full capabilities. So they've shared an MP3. We can share video and a bunch of other capabilities.

So we've been pushing that along and it's been going well, man. It's part of the journey as a slow climb. I could say I bought one of your hoodies at a pop-up event you did, and it's probably one of the best hoodies of them. Like, I don't know. There's lots of people to sell clothes. You can go and have it mass-produced. I've had it mass-produced.

You know it all over. I don't know what you do, but it's a different quality. Yeah. The whole everything. And even the logo, it's not like screen printed. You got some, like, weird embossed. technology that like, I don't know, it's super cool and very unique. And it was just, I was, I was very excited to get that home and see that it's not an everyday

hoodie, you know. Yeah, quality has been really central for us. You know, speaking of which, and they can, they can find, you know, the hoodies at our website. It's hippoculture, h-I-P-O-H-Culture.com. That's always going to be a staple of ours. We want to make sure that if you're spending your money, you're going to get the best quality. That's great, man. That's the way to do it, right?

Absolutely. That's good lessons to teach your young people. Hassan, I got to let you get back to doing all these incredible things. But before we go, anything else, I think you've given the plugs. Give those again. Yeah. And anything else we didn't cover. So October 3rd, our annual gala, fifth annual at the Mitzpah.

Information will be on our website. August 12th, we'll be doing the golf tournament with Impel. And then August 27th, we're going to have the, immersion fundraiser at Love Handles on James Street. So any of those, you can support us. Our website is gly.foundation. And, you know, we're looking for any help and support to continue doing this good work.

That's awesome, man. Hassan, thank you so much. Come back anytime. When it gets closer to the gala, let's definitely make sure to get you back here and promote that a little bit too. And I love it, man. Yeah.

Thank you so much. Appreciate you. And with that, that's today's episode of Good News, York. You can find all of our episodes and clips on all of our socials. You should follow them all and like and share and do all that fun stuff. And also, if you like this sort of content,

you can now support us. So if you go to Clickstream Studios or Good NewsYork.com, you'll see the support GNY button. And you can not only get traditional advertising, but you can actually sponsor organizations like Hassan's nonprofit or a local restaurant and let us go and feature them and give them some love on top of it.

So we've tried to make a really valuable sponsorship opportunity here for Good News York, and we hope you'll take advantage of that so we can do more of this. And with that, I'm Matt. Peace out.