Attract. Empower. Succeed.

Network Connectors is a Kansas City, Missouri-based nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the impact our next generation of leaders will have on the city’s urban neighborhoods and its nonprofit community. Our unique storytelling approach helps our “emerging leaders” benefit from contacts they get from community veterans, or “seasoned leaders.” Network Connectors is building bridges itself, forging a cross-city and cross-cultural partnership between Guadalupe Centers and Calvary Community Outreach Network — a collaboration that will move our vision forward in the future. Network Connectors partners also include Kansas City PBS, The Call newspaper, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Institute for Human Development.

Featured Videos

Network Connectors has an important storytelling component, which not only enhances the message of our emerging leaders, but which also adds a unique educational component to our work. That’s because Network Connectors is drawing upon the talents of journalists of color and minority teen videographers to help prepare the videos and written stories about our emerging leaders.

The videos and stories about the emerging leaders are below.

Candance Wesson
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A Dream Come True: Candance Wesson Helps Woman Succeed After Prison

By Joe Robertson

Candance Wesson was falling, lost like all the incarcerated women around her, when she sprung awake in the dark of her own prison bed. She’d gone to sleep, troubled again by the suffocating fear that she and her fellow inmates had little to hope for…

Manuel Medina
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Former West Side Youth ‘Taking Care of Business’ for Kids Like Him

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call

Life was not always rosy for Manuel Medina growing up on the West Side of Kansas City, Missouri, but he could always find refuge, mentors and friends at the Guadalupe Centers …

Frank Douglas
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Murder of Son Drives KCMO Faith Leader To Start Multifaceted Nonprofit

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call

On Jan. 21, 2019, tragedy altered the life of Bishop Frank Douglas of Beth-Judah Ministries in Kansas City, Missouri. It was then that his son, Cameron, was shot and killed at the age of 23. …

Reynard Zweifel
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Near Murder, Gun Death Drive Work of KCMO Youth Mentor

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call
At just 13 years of age, Reynard Zweifel came close to being killed at the hand of another teen attempting to complete a gang initiation.  …

Ryan Rumpf
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‘Best School I have Ever Been a Part of’: Kansas City Educator Loves Serving Immigrant Families

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call
On the day after Labor Day last year, Kansas City Public Schools embarked on a mission to better serve the immigrant and refugee children coming through its doors. …

Adrion Roberson
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KCK Sports, Education Nonprofit Embodies Passion of its Co-Founder

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call
Adrion Roberson has stopped coaching youth football after more than three decades. But even after leaving the sidelines, he remains driven to transform the lives of his players and their parents. …

Mary Taylor
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Former Inmate Serves as ‘Voice on the Outside’ for Women Prisoners

By Joe Robertson
Mary Taylor’s life took unexpected turns, as if through a kaleidoscope, on the path that would lead her to be founder of the nonprofit 3 Quarters of the Way Done. …

Jim Atwater
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Hearing-Impaired Nonprofit Founder Aims to Remove Blinders from Corporate America

By Mike Sherry
A first-grade hearing test was an eye-opener for Jim Atwater. …

Daniel Gilmore
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Ferguson, Missouri, Experience Inspires Marketer to be ‘Incubator’ for Creatives

By Aubrey Hughes
Kansas City Call
As a teenager, Daniel Gilmore watched Ferguson, Missouri, burn in the riots that followed the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown. …

Jessie Jefferson
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Tireless ‘Ms. Jessie’ Cultivating Next Generation of Neighborhood Leaders

By Joe Robertson
“You just start doing stuff,” Jessie Jefferson said. And you answer to this persistent calling to solve neighbors’ problems because “you can’t say no.” …

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