Homeboy Industries helps launch plan for LA28 Olympic merchandise

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Set us as preferred Los Angeles businesses and nonprofits have been clamoring for a way to benefit from the massive influx of fans and cash they expect from the 2028 Summer Olympics.Now some of them will get a chance to manufacture and sell Olympic-branded merchandise.The Olympic organizing committee, LA28, will announce the Made for Two-Eight licensing program Tuesday — and its first partner will be Homeboy Industries, the nonprofit that operates what it describes as the largest gang intervention program in the world.Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery will make T-shirts featuring the Olympic torch, Homeboy and the official LA28 logo, based on a design by Fabian Debora, who leads the nonprofit’s Art Academy.

The torch imagery is meant to highlight the upcoming Olympics and the 1984 L.A.Games, in which Homeboy’s founder, Father Greg Boyle, carried the Olympic torch.LA28 plans to announce partnerships with a number of other local entities that will make a wide variety of items, such as stationery, toys, hats, magnets, candles and pet accessories.

The Made for Two-Eight program will first partner with manufacturers based in the city of Los Angeles before expanding to include the rest of L.A.County.

Los Angeles is the home to more venues than any other city and whose government serves as a financial guarantor of the Games.“With this partnership with LA28, we’re essentially announcing to Los Angeles and the world that our community is as deserving to participate in an event like the Olympics as any other community,” said Steve Delgado, co-chief executive of Homeboy Industries.“We believe in two things: that everybody’s capable and that we belong to each other.

That’s been our message for 40 years and it’s a message for the modern Olympiad too.”Homeboy, which provides jobs for current and former gang member...