ARYSE

Our final Youth Steering Committee (YSC) meeting of the year took place on Saturday, May 23rd and our students spent the afternoon in the Northside at the Children’s Museum with and City of Asylum!🎙️

Our YSC members started the day by building on their public speaking skills through podcasting. Grace and Alexa from SLB Radio shared about their work and the importance of audio tools for public speaking, and our youth leaders had the opportunity to interview each other on their blog entries. If you have not checked out our YSC members blog on leadership, read it on our website!

The second half of the meeting took place at City of Asylum where students enjoyed lunch and our members who are graduating high school were honored for their community service and leadership in ARYSE as members of our YSC.

We are so proud of all our YSC members for their leadership, growth, and commitment to ARYSE. We can’t wait to see what they all accomplish, both inside and outside of our Youth Steering Committee and ARYSE.🥰 And a HUGE shoutout to Meg and Chance for guiding our youth leaders throughout the last year, and to ARYSE alum and former YSC member, Nargis for volunteering with the program. We appreciate all of you!💛

Last week was the third and final event in our Post-Secondary Support Program’s financial empowerment series. Inspired by the positive feedback from our first ever financial empowerment event last year, we hosted this 3-event series to talk about all things financial: personal agency, managing of funds, credit, scholarships and loans, culture, and much more!🤗

Following these events, 75% of students felt more comfortable talking about money, and 100% said the information shared was something they’d talk to their families about. We are so appreciative to our students for trusting us in supporting them with their post-high school journey, and for always sharing how we can improve our events and programs to best support them.

Thank you to our funding partners who have made the Post-Secondary Program possible: Posner Foundation, Duquesne Light, and the Elsie Hillman Foundation. And thank you to partners who attended these events and shared your knowledge, resources, and time with our students: Equitable Advisors, Pittsburgh Promise, PHEAA, POISE Foundation, Pittsburgh Tomorrow, and Dollar Bank.

Last week, Dakota hosted a dinner with 6 of our alumni who completed their first year of college!🥳The alum, Dakota, and Fernán enjoyed a meal from Chinatown Inn and reflected on their first year of college, lessons learned, and resources they used or would like to try during their second year of college.

The institutions that the students’ completed their first year at include Carlow University, CCAC, Penn West - Clarion, and LaRoche University. While this dinner marks the celebration of one year of college completed, it also marks a programmatic milestone as this past year was the first full-year of dedicated support to ARYSE high school seniors and alumni through our Post-Secondary Support Program. We are so grateful to Dakota for all the time and energy she puts into the intentional planning, facilitating, and supporting of our students and their families.💛

We are so proud of these 6 alums for all their hard work and dedication during their first year of college and look forward to all that they will accomplish during their second year!✨

In their April programming sessions, our Youth Steering Committee (YSC) members reflected on leadership and talked about two important leadership skills: asking questions and public speaking. With these new skills, they generated questions about leadership and 9 of our members are sharing their responses with you in our latest blog, “Our Youth Leadership Committee’s Thoughts on Leadership”.📝

We are so proud of all of our YSC members who contributed to this blog and are grateful they trust us with sharing their words. To read the blog, check your inbox or find it on our website.📩