Full Transcript of Remarks by the President at My Brother’s Keeper Town Hall

Excerpt: “Now, everybody has got different talents and everybody has got different passions. And sometimes — part of the goal of My Brother’s Keeper is to expose you to more things so that you don’t think that the only thing you can be passionate about is what you’re seeing on TV. And part of the problem with young men of color is oftentimes the only thing they see to be passionate about is basketball or rap. And we want to make sure you get exposed to graphic design, or you’re exposed to engineering, or you’re exposed to being a lawyer, so that maybe you will be passionate about that.

And goal number three — or third thing — and I’ve got a longer list, but here’s the third thing that’s pretty important — understand that you will not achieve by yourself, which means that you’ve got to be able to invest in relationships with other people who you can learn from, who will support you, who you will support in turn. And if you learn how to be somebody who is a good teammate, who is connected and is thinking not just about yourself but about others as well, and they then respond to that by wanting to help you because you’ve shown yourself to be reliable or trustworthy or having somebody else’s back, you then build a network for yourself. And that increases your capacity to get things done.”