Annually, we select a theme for Elevate that guides the emphasis of the organization in our programming, communication, development and community-building work.
This year’s theme reflects two essential truths of our approach to serving the students of our city. The 2024-2025 theme for Elevate Indianapolis is “A Big Family with Big Goals.”
In over 20 years of serving teenagers, both vocational and avocational youth work, what I’ve seen consistently is no teen wants to feel like they’re “in a program.” Some of my biggest mistakes as a mentor, coach or foster parent came when I treated a teen like they were in a program and missed the humanity and personal nature of the work.
While, in their nature, there is nothing wrong with organizations and programs per se, no child, teen or adult wants to be a program. What I hear weekly from students as they describe their involvement with Elevate is how it’s a family. We hear it so much, you’d think it’s part of their onboarding. But it’s not! Time and time again since our founding in 2015, students will share the depth of their relationships with their Elevate peers and Elevate mentors and the team as a whole and how Elevate simply feels like a family.
However, what I love most about this year’s organizational theme is our students chose it. We submitted 8 different options (including an option to reject them all) to select, and our Elevate students picked this one. Capturing, listening and honoring the voice and opinions of our Elevate students is critical to our mission and drives organizational and program decisions every year, so I felt compelled this year that they should decide the theme.
And at Elevate, we have big goals for our students! We have big goals as an organization, we want our students to have big present and future goals, and we want our city to have big aspirational goals for the students we serve. Too often our community, politicians, educational systems and society lower the bar for what the students of our city can achieve.
However, what I’ve seen so often, when a student is met right where they are, provided adequate support and understanding, shown potential pathways forward, and deeply believed in, the outcomes of their impact can be shocking and break the predetermined narratives and stereotypes often set on the students we serve, despite years of seemingly insurmountable barriers.
Heading into the 2024-2025 year, we continue to aim at a 95%+ annual graduation rate, 90% completing an Elevate 2-year actionable plan, 3,500+ Sports & Adventure hours along with many other big goals you can see! Thanks to the support of our community, school partners, parents and families, we are proud to provide growth-challenge levels of support to match these goals. And, as we’ve seen for years, our students continue to excel.
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