WS Chronicle

By Busta Brown

There are so many inspiring words to describe my Person of the Week, so I’ll just name a few: phenomenal, intelligent, bold, visionary. Magalie Yacinthe is the interim executive director and board chair of HUSTLE Winston-Salem and owner of So-IN Forsyth. It’s a new and growing company, one that all of us can benefit from in various ways. 

“So-IN Forsyth stands for Social Innovation Oil Company. It’s really a two-phase company. Our goal is to take used cooking oil from restaurants and various things like that and reprocess it. Basically, we clean the oil. But temporarily we use a state company to turn it into biodiesel for us. My motivation is to create a local bio-economy with a circular model that benefits all people. I sincerely care about the health of our youth and our communities, so my goal is to make high quality small batch biodiesel to fuel school buses. The buses are driving all around the city so the pollution impacts everyone, because it gets into our lungs. It especially impacts our youth. I read a study and one of the key things that stuck out with me was most children that stay home due to asthma, it is being triggered by the dirty fuel that primarily comes from our school buses,” said Magalie.

“ After further study, the numbers affected were mostly Black children. And that hit home for me because I’m Black and care very much about our youth and community. And the very small change with high quality biodiesel fueling our school buses will have a huge impact on the economic impact of the community and quite honestly, the carbon footprint as well,” said the 34-year-old entrepreneur.

She said it’s time we begin to have an impact on our environment and cleaner air. “The more I learned how dirty gas and other pollution are negatively impacting the Black communities, I said I have to do something. This is bigger than just a business to me, this is about keeping communities healthy and alive. It’s a blessing that God allowed me to meet my partners and start this business. We do need the local businesses’ support to sign on,” said Magalie. 

I asked her about the importance of local support. “The productive part of what we do is we do everything locally. We work with all local businesses, process locally, and phase 2 we want to use the biodiesel fuel to put into our school buses. All of the restaurants that we work with, we encouraged the communities to go out and support them. This local bio-economy circular model will benefit all people with creating lots of jobs, building trust and entrepreneurship as well. We want high school and college students to learn about STEM fields and understand how to create a business from it. We must share our entrepreneurial stories with our youth, so they know about all the options available to them,” Magalie said. 

I joked about how my mother used the same oil from our Crisco can to cook everything and we both had a good laugh. She continued, “I love food and I love going to restaurants, so let’s use that cooking oil that you’re going to use to fry my chicken, for the purpose of keeping our community healthy, clean and alive. And with my company, So-IN Forsyth, it’ll help create jobs. It’s also Mayor Joines’ goal to make Winston-Salem 100 percent green. He sent me a letter in support of the work So-IN Forsyth is doing.” 

I asked Magalie to share the five steps on how local businesses can sign up. “Step 1, restaurants and business owners can set up a meeting with one of SO-IN team members. We like to explain how working with us will help the community. We’ll also ask how often you’d like your oil collected. Step 2 is, we’ll arrange for the oil pick up. We provide you with the containers, we do all of that. Step 3, we’ll share on all of our social media platforms that you support SO-IN Forsyth and we also use our marketing platforms to promote your business. Step 4 is, we start collecting the oil based on your schedule. Step 5, our competitors are national, so the beauty of using us is that we’re local. We’ll match whatever you’re being paid or increase it, because it’s so important to us that we keep it local. And our contracts are non-binding, so you can leave at any time.” 

As Magalie was speaking, I understood her company a lot more. The restaurants and businesses have to get rid of the used oil anyway, so it’s only good business to keep it local. I’m hoping after this article, her phones begin to ring off the hook. 

As we came to an end, she shared some very inspiring words for youth and business. “If you’re looking for a rewarding and low-cost franchise opportunity that will generate a strong investment, this is it. Give us a call and let’s continue to keep Winston-Salem thriving. I want to be an example to youth that you can’t limit yourself or your dreams. It’s super important to me that a little Black girl can see me and believe she can do whatever she wants to do.” 

My phenomenal, intelligent, and bold Person of the Week is a true visionary, Magalie Yacinthe. To contact Magalie, call 336-339-4944 or visit so-inoilco.com.