TEMPLE TERRACE — A new tool has been developed to assist the youth of the greater Tampa area to achieve bright futures beyond even their own imaginations.
Launch Hub Tampa is a website developed by the inaugural class of The Leadership and Innovations Group of the Temple Terrace Uptown Chamber of Commerce. The intention of the site is to pool all the available resources available to this population into one visually appealing, easy-to-navigate tool.
The brainchild of Deb Prescott, president and CEO of the chamber, the 2025-2026 class is a group of 18 community and organizational leaders such as executives, business owners and government officials, who want to make a difference in the community.
As members of the class, these leaders, such as Nalini Gajadharsingh, branch manager of the Temple Terrace branch of Mid-Florida Credit Union, and Effie Santos, founder and president of Madi’s Movement, have been twice-monthly immersed in the workings of the community in order to understand how their expertise can be put to use for the betterment of the community.
The class, which began in August, graduates April 23. Prior to that graduation, they were required to complete a class project. The result is Launch Hub Tampa.
The inaugural class has raised the bar for all classes to follow, according to Gajadharsingh.
“Typically,” she said. “Leadership groups do things like painting community property, cleaning up a park or a beach, something like that. You may work with Habitat for Humanity for a day to help build a house. Usually, that’s what the project will look like. We thought since we are the first one for Leadership and Innovation, we want to go really big — something impactful.”
A consensus formed amongst the class that their focus should be youth. In Gajadharsingh’s words, “How do we help youths in our community see a brighter, stronger, better future?”
The answer lay with Santos, who founded Madi’s Movement after the death of her 19-year-old daughter, Madison, in a car accident on March 4, 2021.
Madi was passionate about helping the kids she knew from her high school who were aging out of foster care and who lacked the resources to meet their basic needs, let alone the knowledge of how to strive toward a better future.
Since Madi can’t live out her own dream, her mother founded Madi’s Movement to do it for her. In that work, which has helped 245 youths in the past two years alone, Santos found the need for a resource like Launch Hub Tampa.
“I say we have this thousand-piece puzzle, right? And all these pieces are different quality resources and based on where our young adult is, we help them build a path forward,” Santos said. “So, it’s being able to have a place for these resources. If it’s housing or food or education, workforce development, transportation, life skills, all of those are pieces of the puzzle, but the hard thing is they’re all separated.”
About two years ago, her organization began collecting those resources with the intent to create a portal. The seed for Launch Hub Tampa was planted.
All the resources on the site are local and tied to a real person that a young person can meet with. Assistance with food, housing, legal needs, health, transportation, financial literacy, internships, job shadowing and more can be found there.
Class members have skin in the game, too. Gajadharsingh is on the website offering assistance with interview preparation and resume building. R.I. Automotive can be found under “Career Exploration” offering a shadow day.
To the young people Launch Hub Tampa hopes to help, Gajadharsingh said, “The goal is to make sure that youths understand that when you go (to the site), you have a team of professionals in your community that want to help you make a brighter future. We want to be a part of your progress in life. We want to make sure that you know that you’ve got good people right here in your community looking out for you and who want to see you succeed in whatever that path looks like.”
An event will be held April 9 at the Temple Terrace branch of Mid-Florida Credit Union at 5002 E. Fowler Ave. to officially launch the website and introduce it to members of the community who come into frequent contact with the website’s target audience, which Gajadharsingh and Santos said is ages 14-25.
At the event, the class hopes to encourage those community members to help with outreach so that young people will know about the site and how to use it. They also need community members to help them add resources to the site, especially internships and scholarships.
The class will be staying on in the form of a steering committee in order to keep the website accurate. Gajadharsingh said next year’s class can participate if they like, but are not required to do so.
