Drumroll, please . . . this year’s Nan Cheney March for Justice Award recipient is Will Green. Will is a consummate doer and giver in Madison. He runs Mentoring Positives, a nonprofit that mentors and guides youth – many of them youth of color – in Madison’s Darbo neighborhood. For more than 10 years, Will and his wife, Becky, have touched the lives of more than 2,500 young people, teaching them what it means to reach their fullest potential and offering them the resources to overcome peer pressure.
Thanks to Will’s own “can do” attitude, Mentoring Positives also introduces youth to entrepreneurship through the production of Off the Block salsa. For the last seven summers, Will and his team of youth entrepreneurs have grown and harvested tomatoes, turned those tomatoes into salsa and marketed and sold jars of Off the Block salsa in Metcalf’s and other stores across Dane County. Sale proceeds go towards supporting the work of Mentoring Positives.
In addition to leading Mentoring Positives, Will is the girls’ varsity basketball coach at Madison’s LaFollette High School. It’s a natural “second job” for Will who played a good game of b-ball when he attended the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Will’s inspiration for all of his work was his mom, Muriel Pipkins, who raised Will and his two brothers to be caring, kind individuals who give back to their communities. It’s fitting that Mentoring Positives bears the same initials as Will’s mom. It was upon her death that Mentoring Positives was started. To this day, Muriel is recognized as the inspiration behind Will’s work. And, we are thrilled to keep her spirit going through Will who is the inspiration to the young men and women he mentors. Honoring Will as this year’s recipient of the Nan Cheney March for Justice $15,000 grant is the right thing to do!
