INDIANAPOLIS – Created to tackle the challenges faced by today’s youth, Elevate Indianapolis helps to stop the spread of generational poverty.
The program, held at Arsenal Technical High School for the past two years, provides a student and teacher mentor model to empower the next generation of leaders by teaching 13 leadership skills.
Senior Grecia Chinchilla will be one of the first students to graduate from the Indianapolis program this June.
"Responsibility, respect, courage, career-mindedness, setting goals. There's a lot of skills and qualities you'd use in your everyday life,” said Chinchilla.
Students in the program take elective classes to help them learn which career path they’d like to pursue. They also meet with teachers informally outside of school for dinners, college visits and other activities like job shadowing.
"We see that having a successful relationship with an adult really is kind of a catalyst for them to be successful in all aspects of their life and they get to see us live out the character qualities that we want to teach them,” said instructor Candace Jones.
According to Elevate Indy’s website, 90 percent of participating students pursue college, vocational training or a service career.
You can learn more about Elevate Indy here.
