Emanuel “Boo” Milton started Cure with Love Strategies, LLC in 2020 to build out immediate and sustainable strategies to provide relief and support to communities. Since its start, Cure with Love has distributed over 3,000 physical units of social emotional learning kits, connected 90 youth with optical health care, and advised multiple leaders in nonprofits, government, and youth services in effective impact.
When I became aware of Emanuel “Boo” Milton’s company Cure with Love, I was taken by its specific mission to help teens and young adults with conflict resolution. In particular, the Cure with Love program “C.H.I.L.L.” which trains teens on how to deal with conflicts when they arise. In this way, Cure with Love specializes in preventative work--helping young people, specifically in the Baton Rouge area, deal with conflict before it escalates. We at The Church Lab view dialogues as preventative measures to conflict. As we have witnessed, those who are practiced in the tools of dialogue are more readily equipped to handle tensions in relationships when unexpected conflicts arise, whether that’s interpersonal conflict or big systemic division such as with the upcoming political election. Not only does dialogue prevent conflict, it also encourages richer, more flourishing relationships in and through inevitable tensions.
Please enjoy the following excerpts from a conversation between myself and Boo as we relate the similarities between his mission and TCL, and hear how he explains the way Cure with Love came about, and how its evolution mirrored his own story.
“I actually began my work in the interfaith realm. A lot of people don’t even realize that. But right after high school I got linked with an internship with Interfaith Federation for Greater Baton Rouge. But my work then shifted into public safety, violence prevention work. So to even think about the intersection of interfaith organizations (as preventative) and public safety blows my mind.
Cure with Love is really an evolution of who I’ve become, manifested into a business model. I started off in high school as a rapper. Then as I evolved as a person and things started shifting, God opened the door for radio. So I was a radio personality for a couple years after that. I had a number 1 show on MAX 94.1 here in Baton Rouge. And as I started to evolve even more, God showed me that what I enjoyed most about the entertainment industry wasn’t the vanity of it, but the connection with people.
From there, I started throwing more community-based events. My first event was “Boo Milton and Friends Give Back Weekend”--manicures and haircuts for kids or anyone in the community who wanted it. Then came my dodgeball event. We had about 120 people participate and 1,000 people in attendance. We had security at the event, but we made sure to have at least one officer on every team to increase positive community and police relationship.
We did a survey with 10% of those in attendance and 76% said they made between 1-5 connections and 18% said they made more than 5 connections. All it takes is 1 connection for you to really feel an impact. Another question on the survey was “How often do you see law enforcement act in a positive way in the community?” Before the event, 79% said never. After the event, 90% said they did. So we created a touchpoint for those who never see law enforcement in a positive way, see them in this space.
After this, I got a fellowship with a group called Cities United. A network of over 150 cities that work with their mayors on creating public safety plans for that city. If we can get [mayors] on board, then we can make the most impact saving the lives of young Black men and boys, because they are the most victims of homicide.
We look at violence as a public health crisis and we look at preventative measures for violence. Law enforcement is a piece of that but they often monopolize the conversation about public safety. It’s illogical because people call the police after something happens. Their job is to enforce the law, so a law has to be broken for them to even engage. At that point it’s already too late. It’s a reactive measure instead of a preventative measure.
I knew what I was doing was helping, but I needed the language and the knowledge of how this connects and makes sense to the larger landscape of saving lives. So Cities United gave me that language. From there I started Cure with Love.
Once I started Cure with Love I started expanding the types of things I do to different outreach initiatives. For instance, C.H.I.L.L. is a conflict resolution model. It stands for Calm, Hear, Interpret, Lead, and Learn. This teaches kids the core of decision making as a whole, anytime you get hit with any type of conflict--anywhere from a flat tire to larger interpersonal relationships.
Social media is by far the biggest conflict teens are facing today. There are conflicts that you don’t even realize stem from social media. So engaging in social media in a healthy way from the jump is what stops all that from happening.
DigCitCommit (Digital Citizenship Commitment) is a toolkit for dealing with social media. It emphasizes the idea that we are citizens in this society. What defines a citizen is living in a certain community and abiding by a certain set of rules. With the internet, you live in this digital world but there are no rules. How do we create a space that is safe and healthy for everyone in a world with no rules? So some of the largest tech companies in America came together and created competencies, ways we can live on the internet that don’t just present a list of don’ts but tell them what they can do.
Ultimately, our goal at Cure with Love is to create and leverage moments of joy and connection. Because joy and connection are the foundations of any type of positive social impact. So I prioritize relationship building as a preventative measure.
It’s like what you guys do with interfaith work- connecting people of different faiths so that whenever war or something does happen we have these core moments of connection. If we can do a better job at creating positive moments between people then we can get to the social impact that we want to see.”