About Us
Building Communities to Frame the Future
In the Making is a nonprofit organization serving as a community resource center providing clothing and household items to individuals, groups and organizations as well as being a source for youth capacity building in a nonprofit environment. Our programs form partnerships with schools, corporations and government agencies in order to serve the community.
We serve as a platform for the incubation and implementation of initiatives and have brought forth several special and impactful community events such as the City Terrace Art Walk (2 yrs. and over 1500 attendees) and The Goddess and the Queer Mercados. In the Making organized the event at Civic Center called El Gran Festival (110 vendors and almost 1500 attendees) on September of 2022. All our events have different art components central to its character and charm, and when combined with our youth interns represented as both artists and entrepreneurs, it makes our events more impactful and memorable. Our community of East Los Angeles has been extremely welcoming and excited to support our efforts.
We are a success story for WDACS Youth at Work program, it has helped us define economic prosperity by building the capacity of over 150 youth interns aged 16-24 with work skills in a mindful setting that also allows for the intergenerational mentorship of valuable life skills. They come to us at a formative age and our goal is to enable them with the skills necessary to succeed in life.
Our Story
Over 13 years ago, Maribel and Ed started working with non profits as part of a natural growth and progression after working in corporate environments that did little to address the much needed resources that the youth in our community could benefit from. We identified and developed a process with which we could serve the community and still be an independent and self sustaining initiative. This was important to us as it is the reason why we developed this organization, to be able to implement the ideas and initiatives which we knew in our hearts would work and have an impact. We were formed in 2016 and became a California Non Profit and 501 (c) (3) in 2017.
Who we are
In the Making was founded by Maribel Valdez and Edward Chang with a sincere desire to be of service to our community. Being born and raised in East Los Angeles helped Maribel envision the change we want to be a part of in this community. To that effect, In the Making serves as a platform in which our youth can formulate new initiatives and be empowered with the support and resources necessary to bring their ideas to reality. Being born and raised overseas gives Edward the cultural connection to our international community, and the extensive work experience helps us navigate our initiatives from incubation to implementation. Maribel and Ed share a passion of creativity and imagination needed in today's quickly changing business environment for community based organizations, and take pride in being resilient enough to adapt, innovate and succeed in being effective agents of change.
