Elevating Indy Youth toward a Pathway to Purpose

Elevate Indianapolis is an education and mentoring non-profit that serves Indianapolis Public Schools students at Arsenal Tech and George Washington High Schools.  Our mission is building long-term, life-changing relationships with Indianapolis urban youth, equipping them to thrive and contribute to their community.  

We provide our students with round-the-clock, daily access to our staff of Teacher-Mentors who support them through our four program areas:  In class, accredited coursework in character, life skills, and leadership; After school mentoring and social-emotional support; College and career readiness through our Pathways to Purpose program; and Adventure learning opportunities.  The students we serve are predominately economically disadvantaged and under-resourced.  They are also 85% minorities, as are 100% of our Teacher-Mentors.  We prioritize hiring staff who have come from similar backgrounds as the students we serve and are able to connect and establish rapport with them quickly.  Our program is part of a national model, Elevate USA, developed 40 years ago in Denver, Colorado, that has been replicated in ten other cities across the US.

         If we meet our fundraising goal, we will be in the running for a $100,000 grant from USA Today and the Indianapolis Star!

We are requesting support for Pathways to Purpose, a key element of the Elevate model.  Pathways to Purpose connects each student with the support of a Teacher-Mentor in and outside the classroom who can help them succeed in graduating from high school and identifying a clear, executable path forward after.  We use the "Four E's" to guide this work:  Exposure to educational & career options, Equipping through soft skills training, Empowering through mentorship support, & Engaging in career-oriented opportunities.  We provide in-class exposure to careers & follow with visits to workplaces & colleges. Through this college and career planning initiative, we help students in all of our courses gain exposure to career fields, take career assessments to gauge their strengths and interests and begin to see their future selves emerge.  

This school year, we are offering a new course during the school day at our Arsenal Tech campus for upperclassmen called Elevate Beyond as part of our Pathways programming.  Elevate Beyond is a highly engaging and interactive experience where students will uncover their personal passions and create paths to pursue those passions through the utilization of 7 character qualities and 6 life skills. Students work with Elevate Teacher-Mentors who help them prepare and execute their post-high school plans, whether they involve enrollment, enlistment, employment or entrepreneurship. In addition, Elevate Beyond students design and deliver a service project to benefit the community, which integrates their identified passions, skills, and post-high school plans.  The class also explores presentation and interview skills, personal financial literacy, resumes and personal statements, job searches, and relationship-based decision-making.

We need your help to provide these Pathways to Purposes experiences to our students at Arsenal Tech and George Washington High Schools.  As we like to say at Elevate, "No one gets there alone."  Our students need their trusted adult Teacher-Mentors to help them dream for their future, set attainable goals, and begin to execute them.  And we need you to provide the financial resources and social media support to help us get the funding we need to make that happen!