Marshall Hatch ’10 received a lot of texts on Sept. 30. Not surprising, given that at the crack of dawn, Time announced its TIME 100 Next, naming him one of “The World’s Most Influential Rising Stars” for 2025. The Chicago native, community advocate, and co-founder and leader of the MAAFA Redemption Project, was featured in the category of Advocate and congratulations were rolling in.

Not long after Hatch graduated from Bates with a degree in politics, he co-founded the MAAFA Redemption Project with his father, Marshall Hatch Sr., a pastor at New Mount Missionary Pilgrim Baptist Church. The younger Hatch is the executive director of the faith-based residential program, which derives its name from the Kiswahili word meaning “a great disaster or terrible occurrence,” used to described the transatlantic African slave trade and all that it wrought.

The MAAFA Redemption Project, which was featured in a cover story about Hatch in Bates magazine in 2021,  brings together young men of color, some with criminal records, all of them at risk, who need connection, job training, and community. It just graduated its eighth cohort in the nine-month program with 29 graduates; a ninth cohort will start on Oct. 6. In 2022, Hatch and his colleagues piloted a program called the Beautiful Seeds Foundation, which works with young women of color in similar situations. Fifteen young women just graduated from the third cohort of Beautiful Seeds. “There’s been a lot of highs and lows,” Hatch said. “I’m grateful.”

Hatch is on the list with the likes of novelist Ocean Vuong, pop star Gracie Abrams, actor Damson Idris and many other advocates like himself — including librarian Amanda Jones, doctor David Fajgenbaum, Lalyua Zaidare, and LGBTQ+ advocate Alex Sheld. He was nominated by none other than civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who has known Hatch personally for years.

Sharpton wrote in his nomination that it has never been so important to elevate leaders on the ground “who are actually building communities up.” Here’s what he said about Hatch:

I have watched the Rev. Marshall Hatch Jr. grow up, having worked with his father to advance justice in Chicago. Today he is the executive director of the MAAFA Redemption Project, a faith-based residential program offering support to at-risk young men in the city. Having heard him speak at the National Action Network’s King Day event in Washington this January, it is clear that he understands the struggle our young people face today is a continuation of the work of Frederick Douglass, Dr. King, and countless others. He knows firsthand that any civil rights movement must have youth front and center. 

Rev. Hatch has been and will continue to be an important voice in Chicago. I am confident he will step up to call out the continued attacks on the city’s Black and brown communities.

Hatch sees the TIME 100 Next honor as a chance to raise awareness. “I think it is another opportunity to just lift up the work that we’re doing on the ground,” he said.

Recognition at this point, he says, is “Timely, pun intended.”

“It’s been hectic here in Chicago,” Hatch said. The presence of ICE in the city has caused concern and upheaval in his community. “The Time piece gives us another opportunity to say, that’s not the way to build community from within. I feel like we’re occupied.”

About 15 years ago, Sharpton moved into the neighborhood near New Mount Missionary Pilgrim Baptist Church, believing in that approach of knowing a community in struggle from within by being present. He and Hatch’s father have remained friends.

“He’s in the lineage of MLK Jr. and so many others,” Hatch said. “Including Jesse Jackson. And so, I’m truly humbled when I stand on all of those shoulders and in the tradition that has been created by these spiritual giants.”

After fielding all those texts and phone calls, he planned to celebrate by heading home to his wife, daughter, and son, to cook dinner for them. And check the Bates Basketball schedule; this former star player likes to catch the Bates-Colby games whenever he can.