Collin Siddell is a normal 17-year-old high school student — except for the fact he founded his own nonprofit organization, Diamond in the Rough. The program focuses on encouraging youth to become productive citizens, purposeful decision making, financial literacy 101, and other programs to inspire and mentor youth.
The program brings in accomplished leaders in the community to speak to children. “We like to take kids who may not come from parents that are successful, don’t have the best situation, are not straight-A students, and may get overlooked,” Siddell, a senior at Houston High School, says. “We like to take those kids and let them know they have purpose and that they can achieve anything.
“My program's goal is to increase the potential of the kids, not by throwing unrealistic expectations at them and getting them to become the best they can be in a year's time, but slowly working on the core of who they are and what they want to be.”.
Siddell can relate to those he mentors, not coming from a good financial background himself. “I came from a broken household,” he says. “We didn’t have a lot, and we went to bed hungry a lot of times. And I wasn’t an A-student either.” He admits he was a C or D student, but has gotten much better.
“I wore the same clothes to school every day, so I became a class clown,” he says. “Teachers didn’t really pay me any attention, and they just didn’t care. I just wanted to do a program where inner-city kids’ ideas can be nurtured and supported.”
A Diamond in the Rough
Diamond in the Rough mentors 25 kids at Dexter Elementary. Also, there are new mentors coming to speak to the children every month, after school.
When it comes to school work and finding mentors, Siddell balances his time. “It’s a challenge, but not too much of a challenge because I’ve been planning this for about three years,” he says. “I started it my freshman year so I had a long time to plan and save up money.”
Siddell has big plans for himself and his nonprofit organization after high school. “I plan to major in business,” he says. “I want this to be at every school in Memphis. And then I want to branch [the program] out to Nashville and then to Atlanta.”