A Phoenix entrepreneur is using his content creating powers to send hair love to kids and teens in need.

Will Humphrey started his nonprofit Rooted Youth with a mission to give high-quality hair care products, tools and education to Black and brown kids in the foster care system. Humphrey delivered his first haul of 60 boxes to foster kids in Arizona in November. He  is already in touch with other agencies eager for his next batch of boxes. Humphrey hopes the products give children a sense of autonomy and self-care during a time when they can control very little.

“Rooted Youth is about celebrating natural hair, and then making sure that all that magic that’s in natural hair that the youth can play with that and use that to inform their own identities, self confidence and agency over how they look and present themselves,” Humphrey said.

Humphrey’s heart melts for these teens and children because he was once one. Born and raised in New Jersey, he floated in and out of foster care from age 3 to 13 years old. He is familiar with how the system can shred a child’s sense of identity because they don’t get a say on where they live. While he didn’t live with a white foster family, the Black foster families he did stay with didn’t have the time to do his hair. Buzz cuts were the norm and that was it. He couldn’t grow his hair out like he wanted.

Things got worse when he was placed in a juvenile detention center at 10 years old.

“I wasn’t put in there for some crime or thing that I did, but because that was a state resource,” Humphrey said “I was in the custody of the state, and that was the only place that they had available.”

The detention center was run by white people who barely provided shampoo, even for straight hair. Authorities ignored his request to receive hair products made for his hair texture, which left a young Humphrey feeling hopeless. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can’t wait to age out of all of this so I can just do my hair the way that I want to do it,” he said.

Using proper hair care products may seem like a small thing to those who have access to those items freely. But hair care plays a major role in youth’s well-being.

“When you do your hair the way you want it, and you know it looks good, you feel so much better walking into any space,” Humphrey said. “You know your hair is looking good and that you are fly. You gain accessibility there in terms of confidence. Being in foster care, for me, really disrupted my journey towards confidence because I didn’t have control over how I looked.”

Humphrey didn’t feel a sense of freedom until he went to college. And it was perfect timing, too.

A new natural hair movement wave was taking shape, meaning his friends were ditching the chemical relaxers and snipping off their straight hair to make way for flourishing coils and curls. Humphrey found a utopia of knowledge on YouTube as hair influencers educated people about what products to buy for the perfect twist out and how to properly moisturize Black hair.

There was just one thing. The natural hair community was lacking when it came to Black men influencers. While it didn’t change the information Humphrey was receiving that much, he saw an opportunity to become the representation that was needed at the time by starting his YouTube channel WillOnAWhim in 2018. Humphrey wasn’t thinking about the popularity it would bring him until he posted a video of him braiding his own hair on Facebook. By the time he woke up the next day, it had received more than 80,000 views.

“I was like, ‘Huh!?’ Because I just shared it with my friends,” Humphrey laughed. “Who are all these people watching and commenting.”

There he was, A 22-year-old who finally got the chance to experiment with his hair and it had already created a sense of identity within himself and online. With more than 560,000 followers on YouTube and Instagram combined, Humphrey’s brand has since expanded to include travel, food and life shenanigans. Humphrey is at a point in his content creation journey where he can use his platform to create change.

“I don’t want to be just throwing stuff up on the internet into the void just to make money. Like, that, to me, doesn’t feel good,” Humphrey said. “My goal is always to impact people. So now I’m at a moment where I’m like, ‘OK. How can I take the resources and the network that I’ve built over the years to help even more people – people who were like me.’”

Finding ways to give back to the community he came from and help other youth in foster care was always brewing in the back of his mind. Once he had the means to do so, Humphrey got straight to work tapping into his brand partnerships for items. He said Maui Moisture, Carol’s Daughter and celebrity hairstylist Felicia Leatherwood were eager to send him free products. He applied for a grant with Adobe to help with some business services. He wasted no time making sure no child felt like their hair was an inconvenience.

“This is important for youth to have as a part of their journey of building the foundation of their identity and Blackness by returning to their roots and figuring out their natural hair,” Humphrey said.

Humphrey spent a week calling different foster care organizations to let them know about his mission. When he got in contact with Foster Arizona, a nonprofit helping foster youth and their families, Humphrey knew he was on the right path. A staff member told him about a party they were planning and how they were in desperate need for hair care products and education on how to use them because the parents didn’t know how to do Black hair.

” I was like, ‘Wow. OK. It’s the same thing that was happening in the year 2004,’’” Humphrey said. “Not so much has changed. So that told me that what I’m doing is definitely necessary.”

Humphrey rented a U-Haul and dropped off the boxes the day before the event. Since it was a girls-only party, Humphrey didn’t get to see the youth’s face as they popped open the boxes that could set off their hair care journey. He’s is preparing for an all-boys event in February, which will bring Humphrey’s journey full circle.

“In a kind of therapeutic way, this is like me kind of helping younger me out through the work that I do,” he said. “If I can make a little boy’s foster care experience a little bit better, that’s impactful, and it feels good, and it’ll help the kids in a tremendous way.”

If you would like to donate to Rooted Youth, you can send Will Humphrey a direct message on his Instagram or email him at [email protected].