SPEAKER_01 1:45

Good afternoon, everybody. This is DJ and Watt with the Hilltop Glove Podcast. We are live, in effect, from the Bradley Community Center and Park here in beautiful Gastonia, North Carolina, on this lovely Sunday afternoon. And I might be remiss to say that, man, there are some excellent folks out here, vendors, program folk. Matter of fact, the fire department's out here as well, as they're doing a nice community fundraising and back-to-school event, just community involvement and et cetera, trying to just let people know what's going on here. Put on by one of our past guests and current friends, Reasons Brown. And so we always like to be a part of whatever he's doing, anything that is around what the honeycomb experience is about. We love to offer our help and our support. And I just want to say that we are sitting down right now with somebody who had me out here sweating about to die. I've been running suicide, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

So I apologize for this beautiful morning.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

I like that active on this beautiful morning. Oh, good Lord. I am mad. I'm awake now. I am with lovely Miss Jasmine. Yes. She actually runs an organization and business here. I'm going to go ahead and let her drop her information so that you all know who she is. And then we're going to have a nice little conversation about what she does and what she hopes to see happen in her community in the upcoming future. But just to begin, just tell our podcast a little bit about who you are and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yes. So my name is Jasmine Cox. I am a youth mentor and I intentionally uplift the community just to, you know, be happier, just to be more connected. I'm big on families and bringing the family dynamic back together. And so post-college, I came back to Charlotte from Asheville and I've just been doing things to bring community together, bring families together, and then create safe spaces for children to be themselves, be authentic, and grow. I had a big passion for mental health during my time in college. And so that's like embedded in all of my services and pivot. And that's kind of where all my focus is. But intentionally uplifting the community tends to like uplift mental health as well. So that's what I do.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Excellent, excellent. Well, you're right on brand with what we love to promote and make sure is available and known to folks in our community and abroad. And I must ask, just to start off with, where did you go to college?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

I went to UNC Asheville, Go Bull Dog. Woohoo. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

There we go. We got to get a shout out.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

What did you enjoy most about your college experience there? And what did you learn while in college that led you on the path to where I ran into you today?

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Yes. I loved Asheville. What I loved about Asheville the most, excuse me, is it just opened my mind up. I didn't think I would be going to school in the mountains, honestly, around like people not of my color and just like doing things that weren't doing that weren't doing being done. Yeah, you know that it was just new stuff like hiking and camping and things like that that I was never introduced to that I was able to do in college, which was cool. And then I was able to meet people who were like interested in weird things to me. Like, I mean What's weird? Weird, like the classes that we had there, some of them were like, let me think back. But one of them in particular was about the moon and the stars and things like that. But okay. Yeah, they would always would go out and like host events and things like that with yoga, and then they would pair with that class where they would learn about the stars and then wellness. And I feel like Asheville just brought wellness into every single discipline, which I thought was cool. And so it opened my mind up to think about like how holistic life is, like how everything is connected and how much we just change over time. So the reason I've gotten here from Asheville is because they opened my mind to mental health a lot. I went through my own struggles during college, and that community was able to support me a lot. Even, I don't know, even with me just plopping in there. I had my track community. I had community within schools. You were an athlete? I was. I ran track there. Oh, go ahead. I ran track. Well, I was an athlete mom. Because you know what they say about track, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Track. What you do in track is everybody else's punishment. Yeah. So yeah, you were punishing us today. You were punishing some of these basketball players out here, too.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

And I was having fun with it. I went first, y'all. I set the tone, and I had a great time. So I appreciate that, J. It was a little tough, but they got this. Yeah, so I was an athlete. I had a lot of different communities, but they all fed into me in a lot of different ways. And it it all came back to intentional living. Like everything you do affects the people around you, and everything you do is gonna affect you long term. So that's how I got to this point now. And following my mental health struggles, essentially, I realized community is what healed me. And so I wanted to be a place where people could come and have a community that's healing to them.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Excellent, excellent. And I and I must ask this question since we're out here and I know we're out here for reasons. How did you run into Reasons? How did he contact you to come out here today to offer your services? And if you could also tell folks what how to find your services and what the name of it is.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Yeah, for sure. Shout out to Reasons because he's doing amazing work in the community and he's just such an authentic soul, and that's something that's been big for me coming back from school. It's just like connecting with my soul tribe that's actually authentic and like really willing to uplift in the community. So shout out to Reasons Brown. Y'all tap into the honeycomb experience, please. The way I got connected with Reasons is he was actually like watching some of the stuff that I was doing through social media, and I hosted my random acts of love week initiative this past month, which he was involved in because I used his space for a meeting that was.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

You told us about it. Okay, that's how that's you.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

That's me. That's me. I did a legacy mixer for community leaders in the area that were just doing intentional things for people. Okay. And so that was just celebrating them and bringing them together and reasons like he was on go with minimal timing. I had issues with space and things like that. He was just like, yeah, let's do it. And it just was all authentic and real. So that's how we got here. And he asked me to support him and do some stuff for the kids at this event. So I was more than happy to do that.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Excellent, excellent. Could you tell some folks about the name of your organization and how they could contact you about your services, whether it be for mentorship or assistance with physical well-being or et cetera?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

For sure. So the name of my organization is Pivot Social Services, and we have three different sectors. We have a wellness sector, a youth development sector, and then a community engagement sector. So you guys can get involved in any of those offerings and you can visit the website at www.pivot social services.org. Nice and simple. And you'll be able to find all of those offerings on that website. And also tap in with Instagram to see what we're doing consistently. That is at Power in the Pivot. Again, power in the pivot. We do a lot of community projects and just a lot of fun reels, inspiration. I allow my mentees to follow me on there. So if you're ever looking for mentorship, if you want to volunteer within the community, if you need a personal trainer, Pivot Social Services is your go-to.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Excellent, excellent. And one last thing before we finish out, we always like to do this, and you'll hear more about this this year. But shameless plug. Do you have anything coming up that you would like folks to know about so that we can help promote you?

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yes. I actually am going to do a selfless, shameless plug, and I'm going to plug my mother here. Shari Cox is a author here in Charlotte, and she's actually going on her book cruise in the next two months. So she's going to the Bahamas and she's stopping in Miami and then flying off and going off to the Bahamas. I'm sorry. But tap in with Sheree Cox. Her book, What's in My Chatterbox, is one of my favorite books, and it's on Amazon. So make sure y'all go tap in with my beautiful mother. I love her.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

Man, we're gonna have to holler at her and see if we can get around to the podcast because we we come up to Charlotte multiple times per year.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

I would love it. She's a teacher in the school system she works at the front door. Yeah, she works at an alternative school. So she works with students who you know most teachers don't really want to work with. So yeah, she has a lot of stories. She knows a lot about what's going on, a little bit higher up there.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Would you be nosy? Would you be nosy for me? I'm gonna throw something at you. I'm gonna put it on a tape right now since we have a tape. What's up? So we're gonna be back up here September 16th. And we're gonna be actually talking to somebody who's pretty big in the community here. We're gonna be doing a couple interviews that day. If you wouldn't mind, we'll make sure we get contact information before we leave. Reach out to your mother, see if she would be willing to come out on a Saturday. That's a Saturday. Okay. It'll be early in the day, somebody before noon to possibly do a podcast about her book and et cetera. We can help with some promotion, but just to see what it's like with her being an educator in the area that she's in. Because of course, being grown folks now, we know a lot of educators. We went to school with folks who are educators, and just hearing their mindset and what they go through from day to day, um, dealing with student populations, helping to push student students through so that they can not just get educated, but to succeed as human beings. It's one of the biggest things that we've seen. And I know my brother and I, we work with nonprofits. We've always worked with either nonprofits or educational systems to assist folks. So it's always cool to hear their perspective. So that's an ask I have for you.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

I will be putting that plug in. And that's why I love what I do because I feel like teachers need so much more support outside of schools. They do, they do so much for us in the schools and for families. But students need that support outside of school so they can feel so teachers can feel supported in schools because it's a lot going on right now. So thank you for the space and thank you for even the shameless plugs.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

No worries, no worries. And as always, this is DJ and what in Skip on location with the Hilltop Glove. Everybody, we'll make sure that we're gonna see some lives on this as well. So obviously, if you're around during the day and you see these lives, come by and say hello. But we're enjoying ourselves out here today with Reasons Brown and his honeycomb experience as they're doing their back to school thing. Other than that, we will tell we will holler at you later. I'm sure we're gonna speak to some other cool people today as well. So this is not the only one, but uh, we'll sign off till later. Peace.

unknown 10:55

Thank you.