Future Leaders Rising
Linking young people's creative drive to school success, high school graduation, and a focus on college and career.
Our education and youth development initiatives go far beyond study assistance. They build peer support circles to provide the social dimension of educational success, leverage institutional and community resources to address financial and family barriers to high school completion and higher education engagement, forge a commitment to academic success from young people's own creativity and drive for self-expression, and build bridges between educational institutions and communities.
These innovative and highly effective strategies are all the beneficiaries, whether direct or indirect, of a $1 millon investment in program development and operation by the Everychild Foundation. Beginning in 2009, Everychild funding of $250,000 per year supported the creation, testing, continuous improvement, and ongoing success of programs that work to set at-risk youth under the age of 18 on pathways toward high school graduation, post-secondary education entry and degree completion, and/or employment in high-wage, high-demand industries with strong career development potential. The funded components of this strategy make up the Everychild Youth Pathway Initiative. Programs participating in this initiative are labeled as such on their SBCC web pages. Beyond this formal inclusion of certain programs, though, we know that the youth-serving component of all SBCC's career and education programs has benefited tremendously from the period of strategy development and fine-tuning of best practices afforded by the Everychild investment.
Key education and youth development initiatives at SBCC include:
College Support
Applying the best practices of peer and social support from our Career Pathways Program to support post-secondary success.
Urban Arts Crew
Exploration of art is the jumping-off point for a 12-week in-school program promoting academic achievement and a focus on graduation.