This local social enterprise enthusiast is catching a ride with the Millennial Trains Project

This summer, social enterprise advocate and CCP student Brandon Stokes is heading west — and when he returns, Philadelphia might have the solution to its socioeconomic problems.

From Aug. 1 through Aug. 7, Stokes will travel on a train from Pittsburgh to Chicago to Kansas City to Albuquerque to Los Angeles with about two dozen other millennials. It’s the Millennial Trains Project, and over the course of the weeklong trip, each participant will conduct a project that will ultimately “benefit, serve, and inspire others.” 

Stokes’s project, called “A Dream Restored: Opportunities for All,” will examine how a person’s non-income assets, or a lack of assets, correlate to the opportunities they have to fulfill the American Dream.

“I’m trying to build a case for the region, but also for the nation, that we really should be promoting asset-based policies instead of income-based policies,” Stokes said — that a person’s worth shouldn’t be focused on how much money they have, but on other assets, such as their amount of education. It’s about building social capital over financial capital.

Brandon Stokes. (Courtesy photo)

At each stop on his trip around the country, Stokes will meet with asset-based policy experts including representatives from Kansas City’s Kauffman Foundation and Chicago’s Center for Financial Services Innovation, to discuss ways to “democratize capitalism” and increase equity. (Read the U.K.-based ResPublica’s “Securing Assets for All,” which Stokes surmised “could easily be a manifesto for Philly and the region,” as a primer on what an asset-based economy would look like.)

Most program participants need to crowdfund their own way onto the train — a whopping $5,000. Stokes was instead selected for a Millennial Trains scholarship from Comcast NBCUniversal, MTP’s lead sponsor.

“We selected Brandon because he is focused on a relevant topic that is facing a lot of communities nationwide, and is an important issue as we head into an election year,” said Jessica Clancy, VP of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal, in an email. “It is both relevant and timely, as he digs into inequality and opportunity in America, and more specifically how technology within the fintech movement can help innovate in the space.”

Stokes’s time on the train will culminate in a blog of articles about how to change the existing economic system based on his conversations with the asset-based policy leaders and directed at policymakers and fintech entrepreneurs.

Stokes will also conduct his own version of Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” bit by asking random people on the street about asset-based policy — “not the heavy stuff,” but opinion questions such as, “What is your definition of opportunity in America, and can that be realized in America today?”

His own answer to that question?

“I would say opportunity is the ability for someone to rise or fall upon their given social status without regard to where they come from,” Stokes said. “Is it a working definition? Probably not, because [success is also affected by] social capital and having wealth.”

But Stokes, ever the social enterprise evangelist, believes there’s hope in the work he’s doing.

“Assets can play a bigger role in helping to restore the American Dream,” he said. When social enterprise comes into play, people “have the means to their own salvation — not a bunch of bureaucrats.”