Las Vegas Sands has contributed $100,000 through the Sands Cares global community-engagement program to 100 Black Men Las Vegas in support of the organization’s youth mentorship, scholarship, and community-service efforts.
The 2025 donation will enable 100 Black Men Las Vegas to offer new programs, including a science, technology, engineering, and math initiative; the Pathways to Public Service program, which focuses on developing a pipeline of law-enforcement and first-responder professionals; and Realtist Academy, which prepares participants to become licensed real estate agents or mortgage brokers.
In addition, Sands Cares funding will help 100 Black Men Las Vegas pursue efforts to identify a permanent location for the organization.
“Sands has always understood our overall goal across all of our offerings, which work together to empower our youth and community members to be healthy, self-sufficient and successful,” Gentry Richardson, executive director of 100 Black Men Las Vegas, said. “We’ve greatly expanded our reach over the past four years with Sands’s support and the 2025 contribution is helping us grow current programs and introduce new initiatives to increase our positive impact even further.”
The Sands Cares contribution continues to help underwrite 100 Black Men Las Vegas’ youth leadership development programs, including the flagship Crossroads youth-mentoring and life-skills program for middle and high school students. Crossroads covers more than 30 critical social and emotional skills that equip participants to successfully engage in their education, professions, and community. In 2024, mentor programs served more than 1,500 students in the Las Vegas area and helped students achieve a cumulative 20% grade-point-average increase over 2023.
Sands’s donation also continues underwriting of scholarships for local college students. Last year, Sands Cares’s funding contributed to a scholarship pool that cumulatively enabled 100 Black Men Las Vegas to distribute more than $80,000 in scholarships funds and the organization aims to provide $100,000 in scholarships in 2025.
Finally, the Sands Cares’s contribution also supports direct community-service programs, including a free monthly Virtual Youth Cooking Class and Thanksgiving with the 100 and Friends, the organization’s annual Thanksgiving dinner distribution event.
Established in 1999, 100 Black Men Las Vegas is the local affiliate of a national organization that works to improve the quality of life and enhance the educational opportunities of Black youths and their families in unified, collaborative, and pragmatic ways. Starting at the elementary level and continuing through adulthood, youths in Southern Nevada benefit from a variety of programs in the areas of mentorship, education, health and wellness, economic empowerment, and leadership development.
“As a leading community service organization in the Black community and Southern Nevada, 100 Black Men Las Vegas continues to have tremendous results in preparing and advancing young people to achieve their goals, while providing a critical foundation of social service support,” Ron Reese, senior vice president of global communications and corporate affairs, said. “We appreciate that our annual donations are maximized to their greatest impact through the organization’s ability to deeply understand the needs of youths and their families and then respond with meaningful programming.”
Sands’s partnership with 100 Black Men Las Vegas is aligned with the company’s focus on education and helping build the workforce of the future
