SC Accelerates: The Epicenter
Santa Cruz Works is excited to share some of the applicants who have applied to our Santa Cruz Accelerates Program. We will be featuring a handful of startups each week!
Name of your startup: The Epicenter
Founder: Allison Paradise
The problem your startup will solve to make the world a better place:
“I know what the problem is... it's adults... no one will let me be free.” – Kai, age 6.
When we are small, we explore and create according to our innate curiosity and intuition. We are connected to who we are – our authentic selves – and our limitless potential.
As we grow older and become part of social systems, social conditioning and expectations start to limit us. Doubt and anxiety appear as authentic expression is subsumed by habits, routines, and behavioral patterns that fit into the agendas of various social systems. This happens to everyone; it is no one’s fault, nor can it be attributed to a single system. The combined effect of our social conditioning is disempowerment. We lose our connection with our authentic selves, learning to rely on our conditioning rather than our intuition, believing in a limited version of our potential rather than knowing our limitlessness.
Sir Michael Marmot has called our current situation an epidemic in disempowerment. He writes, “…a major part of health inequities can be attributed to social determinants affecting the mind, starting in early childhood.” Our disempowerment is affecting our very wellbeing.
Evidence of this is all around us. Twenty-five percent of all children ages 13 – 18 and 18% of all adults have a diagnosed anxiety disorder; 15% of children ages 12 – 17 have experienced a major depressive episode in the last year, as 4.5% of all adults considered suicide; a 2019 study showed that less than half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs. Social conditioning also results in entrenched belief systems that are resistant to new perspectives and eschew true curiosity in favor of confirmation bias.
It does not have to be this way. What if children were given an open space, free of agendas, expectations, and judgement, full of trust, in which to be fully themselves, to be free? What if young people had an experience of empowerment – of connecting with their authentic selves – and were given an opportunity to join a community of similarly-empowered peers?
What if we knew and felt our internal North Star and had the courage to follow it?
Allison Paradise, Founder of The Epicenter
The goal of empowering children is not new. Parents, teachers, friends, and schools try to create spaces where children are free to be their authentic selves. In spite of these efforts, our children remain bound by constraints and expectations. This is because it is not possible for most adults or institutions to provide the environment necessary for an experience of empowerment within the confines of our current social systems and hurried lifestyles.
The Epicenter is unlike anything that exists. Through intentional design, The Epicenter creates the perfect environment for an experience of empowerment. By creating an open space (both physical and virtual) that not only empowers young people but also shows them how to cultivate this experience within themselves, The Epicenter acts as a catalyst for reconnecting students with authentic, spontaneous expression, and a knowing of who they are and their limitless potential.
"I am excited to learn from this innovative, creative community of entrepreneurs." - Allison Paradise, Founder & CEO