Mainstream media constantly bombards us with negative images, portraying nothing but trouble and hard times. While that may be the experience of so many in this day and age, there’s nothing like seeing positivity and hope brought about like a movement such as The Fyu (pronounced like “The Few”).
After being affected by seeing numerous cases of police brutality and other social injustices, founder
Wole “Walls” Solomon made a decision to be the change he wanted to see in this world. From the podcast he started to the current social media phenomenon run by Walls and his team, The Fyu is making a difference by bringing to light social problems and showcasing how real people are making a difference and bettering themselves and the world around them. The Fyu is an incredible undertaking that is only growing in notoriety.
We caught up with Walls and here’s what he had to say:
THE HEAT MAG: Tell us about your movement – how it got started, who all is involved?
WALLS: In October 2014, after attending numerous marches and rallies for unarmed victims of police brutality and other injustices, I (founder of The Fyu, Wole “Walls” Solomon) decided on a different approach. How do you tackle social ills when everyone isn’t affected by the same thing in the same way? After thinking of individual issues that personally affect me, I then asked friends and family about issues they face, and their responses differed from my own. Then I knew I had something.
The Fyu started as a “podcast,” in the sense that many of our earlier content was audio recorded discussions and featured family and friends sharing their views & opinions on things that affected them personally or affected people they love. We only ask one question: What would you like to see less/fyuer of in the world. As we grew we began to diversify our content, adding video and photo features to the mix.
The Fyu mainly consists of myself (Walls) and a rotating team of volunteers who assists with various things: Aaron helps with strategy and event coordinating, Rodney helps with marketing, and Ashley helps with social media.
THE HEAT MAG: What is your ultimate goal with the movement?
WALLS: The ultimate goal of The Fyu is to build a wide scale community who not only express their individual issues but also offer collective solutions. No one thing impacts EVERYONE the same way, so discussions on social ills, injustices, etc. should happen on an individual basis in order to gain consensus and offer collective solutions to individual problems. The Fyu is simply the platform that bridges the gap between problems and solutions.
THE HEAT MAG: What role does each of you play and how do you tie that all in to your mission?
WALLS: Similar to Academy Award Winners, I (Walls) play many roles, lol. I’m in charge of day-to-day operations, finding interesting people with interesting perspectives, creating and editing content, promoting content, and setting future goals with benchmarks, and much more. The roles that the aforementioned volunteers play is vital as well because it aides in our growth and expansion. Our mission is to build a community of 250,000+ members, so everything we do now is centered around that.
THE HEAT MAG: If you could change anything about this world, what would it be and why?
WALLS: If I could change anything in this world it would be the way resources are advertised and given. Many people have no idea about the abundance of various unique resources available to them, regardless of the issues they face. Resources and assistance from NGO’s, state and federal government, Fortune 500 companies, 501C’s etc.are rarely advertised, causing people in need to be oblivious to their existence. The Fyu seeks to change that by partnering with different organizations that focus on specific issues members of our community face, then directly linking the organizations with the individuals. Not only that, but we also see a growing number of our existing community offering solutions to other members we’ve featured — so we’d like to expand that and reward those who do so. Collective solutions to individual issues.
THE HEAT MAG: The topics you cover are so relevant to current events. What are your future plans for FYU?
WALLS: Yes, a lot of our topics are based on current events because our community is made of very intelligent and forward-thinking men and women. Therefore they speak on what they notice is impacting the world and how those issues impact them as well.
Our future plans are to continue building our community and expanding our content – offering content in more creative ways. We’re also building creative tools for our community to use in order to offer solutions to issues other member’s face. Lastly, we’d like to host more events (similar to our food program feeding the less fortunate in the D.C. area), and travel to new places to meet people nationally and internationally who’d like to share their unique stories and concerns.
Social Media/Contact Info for The Fyu:
Main website = exec-walls.tumblr.com/tagged/The-Fyu
Instagram @the.fyu
Twitter @the_fyu
Facebook The Fyu
YouTube The Fyu
