Grant to aid barbershop civics sessions

Through high-tech means and good old-fashioned conversation, African American men visiting Philadelphia barbershops will soon be encouraged to "cut through" the misinformation about the political process and restyle their often-negative thinking about elections and civic engagement.

The project, called Sharp Insight, just won a $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant, designed to get politically cynical and disengaged black men interested in the civic process and back to the polling booths.

The effort to sign up 50 barbers in Philadelphia is being championed by Duerward "DJ Woody Wood" Beale, executive director of the Youth Outreach Adolescent Community Awareness Program and former DJ for the hip-hop group Three Times Dope.

"This project will be a nonpartisan venture," Beale said Friday. "We will not be endorsing candidates."

"Barbershops are trusted spaces in the African American community, where black men talk about everything from sports and entertainment to marriage and politics," Beale observed in his winning project proposal. "Some researchers refer to them as the 'black man's country club.'

"We will recruit, educate barbers, and provide them incentives for getting their male customers to take our surveys on iPads, read our nonpartisan election information, and continually discuss the importance of civic participation," Beale wrote in the proposal. "The barbers that enroll will have their names listed on our radio partner's website, and those that disseminate the largest amounts of information will have a special radio promotion about their shop."

The broadcast partner is iHeart Media and its stations WUSL-FM (99) and WDAS-FM (105.3). And Beale will call on rap superstar Meek Mill, as well as the Roots' Black Thought, a former Youth Outreach member; and Questlove to create nonpartisan public-service announcements to play in the shops.

Then, to sustain the engage-and-empower flow outside the shops, Sharp Insight will rely on "text messages to their cellphones, mass e-mails, social media, newspapers, leaflets, fliers, and information cards."

The program will run from November through June. In total, the Knight Foundation awarded $3.2 million in grants to 22 election-process projects across the country. Sharp Insight was Philadelphia's sole winner.