The Bob Elliott Show Ep. 29 - Trehon Coleman of A Better Community

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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This is The Bob Elliott Show, exclusively on the Live The Dream Media Network.

**Bob Elliott** (0:55)
Welcome again to another episode of The Bob Elliott Show. You know, what we try to do here is to have fun, educate, and bring some of our leaders in this community in front of you, the viewers, so you can know what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. So today, we're going to go back and have a second visit with Trehon Coleman. Trehon is one of the founders of ABC, A Better Community. He was here last back in November 14th.
So we're going to try to get caught up. So, Trehon, welcome back to the show.

**Trehon Coleman** (1:29)
Thank you, Mr. Elliott. Good morning, good morning. And I'm excited, sir.

**Bob Elliott** (1:32)
I'm always excited to have. Now, those of you that have been to our fireside chats at the African American Museum of Southern Arizona, whether it's Ruby Bridges or Call Out of Walls or Dr. J or Tony Dungy, you've seen Trehon do his thing. He's our hype guy. He gets everybody ready for that great guest to come on the show. But not today, we're going to talk about his company, what they do.

**Trehon Coleman** (1:54)
Yes, sir.

**Bob Elliott** (1:54)
So last time you came in, it was November. You kind of got us caught up to that point, but a lot has happened since November. So bring us up to what has happened since last November with ABC.

**Trehon Coleman** (2:03)
Yes, sir. So we start the year off in 2026 with a Black History Month Marketplace. So that brings all the businesses together who wants to support. And we just want to show them love. So we go through that. Then we did something very new, Mr. Elliott. We came to escape the madness. We did a mental health idea, bringing people together with that background to show that mental health is serious and it's okay to be able to say you need help. So we did those two.

**Bob Elliott** (2:26)
And that's huge. I'm so glad you guys did that, because mental health in the last four or five years has finally come forward that people will feel comfortable admitting that they might need it, getting the proper kind of care. And so for you to make it have an avenue for people to come forward and be comfortable.
That's what I liked about that day when you had that event, was that you heard a number of people saying that they were comfortable in the environment to come forward and not feel like, oh, they're going to be looking at me, looking at me like something wrong. No.

**Trehon Coleman** (3:04)
It wasn't that. Mr. Elliott, you're on it. And then a beautiful thing, big shout out to my wife. We called it Escape the Madness into Wellness, and you know March is what? March Madness. So again, just that idea of wellness, and it made a big impact. We moved from March, and then we go into April. As you know, you've always come out to support our egg hunt, showing the community extra love over at the Goodwill. 500 people came out to the Goodwill of Southern Arizona. They opened up their headquarters, and we did that event. It is amazing. Once we finish that, we have a little celebration to all our donors who help us do what we do.
And when we moved from there, Mr. Elliott, we do something that was called the Juneteenth Kickoff. So we partnered with Tucson Juneteenth Festival, and we incorporated where Larry D. Starks is the president, and we're the kickoff organization. So before we get into Juneteenth, we always like to do a kickoff. And after we get through that, we got a big announcement. What is that? The Back to School badge. But we're going to talk about that one a little bit later.

**Bob Elliott** (3:57)
We'll talk about that a little bit later. You know, let's back up just a little bit. So at The Goodwill, that's run by Lance Meeks.

**Trehon Coleman** (4:02)
That's it, Vice President Meeks of Community Development.