The convener.

I’ve spent over twenty years in the classroom, and in recent years I’ve noticed a pattern that’s hard to ignore: young people who grow up with faith seem to quietly let go of it as they get older. Not because they encounter some devastating argument against it. Usually because no one ever asked them the hard questions first, and they’d never had to answer them for themselves.

Faith that’s only ever been handed down, never tested, doesn’t tend to hold. It’s not built to.

That conviction became personal when one of my own sons started asking questions I hadn’t fully prepared him to answer. Not because he was doubting. Because he was thinking. And I realized that raising kids who believe isn’t the same as raising kids who know why they believe, and can hold their ground when the world pushes back.

I’ve always been the kind of person who needs to think something through before I accept it as true. The Foundry exists so teenagers get that chance early — to ask the real questions now, while there’s still someone in the room to help them find real answers.

Tiwalayo Olusakin.