Samuel Grenny knew right away that The Other Side Village was an organization that he could throw himself fully behind. Armed in his role as Communications Director with his experience and education, Sam has high expectations for the Village, its residents, and its impact on Salt Lake City.
Desperate for Change
After being convicted of two felonies and spending a little over ten months in jail, Sam got up close and personal with people who are caught in the cycles of homelessness and the criminal justice system. Spending a total of five years in the criminal justice system, Sam experienced firsthand how once a person is in the system, it is difficult to get out. Especially when they don’t come from the kind of privileged background Sam was lucky to be born into.
During his time in jail, Sam listened to his friends and peers tell their stories where he noticed a common thread: just about every single person he talked to desperately wanted to change their lives, but they were trapped in cycles they didn’t have the tools or resources to escape. Unlike Sam, many of his friends were stuck in intergenerational cycles where multiple close relatives were in and out of jail, addiction, and criminal behavior.
Learning these stories, Sam spoke to his dad, Joseph Grenny, about what they could do to help. What started as a program worked out with the Utah County district attorney to suspend a few inmates’ sentences if they went to Delancey Street in San Francisco, blossomed into The Other Side Academy and now The Other Side Village.
Life on the Outside
Following his experience in jail, Sam completed degrees in philosophy and social sciences with minors in classical studies and ethics. After graduating, he prepared to apply to law school; despite his good score on the LSAT, his application was rejected in part because of his felony conviction from when he was 19 — another opportunity for Sam to experience the barriers that exist for those who’ve spent time in the system. Fortunately, the Huntsman School of Business at USU offered him admission and Sam graduated with his MBA in the spring of 2021.
His education, an uncommon combination of business acumen and social responsibility, taught him to look critically at some of the entrenched social problems in the world and to bring in a business perspective to help solve them, working to create self-reliance and self-sustainability. The knowledge and understanding he gained through his degrees have equipped him with the ideal combination of skills to work on The Village.
The Audacity of The Village
Sam points out a common theme among the ambitious programs that are blazing trails and finding brand new solutions to entrenched problems like homelessness — they are downright audacious. When places like La Fageda in Spain, Delancey Street in San Francisco, and Community First! in Austin started out, they faced detractors and critics saying that what they were trying to do was impossible, that the population they were serving was incapable of what they were attempting, and that they would fail. Each time, these programs quietly said, “We disagree,” and blazed the way to revolutionary new ways of addressing severe societal problems.
To Sam, it’s this same audacity found in the unique vision of The Other Side VIllage that makes it so exciting. By bringing together components from a variety of different innovative programs across the globe, the Village will be a testament to The Other Side’s most audacious assertion: that everyone, everywhere is capable of profound change and deserves the chance to try.
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