Blog Issue 1: A Message from Jenna
By Jenna Baron (she/her), Executive Director
"ARYSE envisions a future where refugee and immigrant youth, grounded in the power of their knowledge and experiences, confidently lead communities and thrive in a world that celebrates their voices. In this world, their representation in leadership is commonplace, and our community thrives in understanding, celebrating, and learning from their wisdom."
Hello, ARYSE supporters!
This is the first of many future blog posts (first-person essays) we’ll share to provide you with a behind the scenes understanding of the people and ideas that - guide our work. Since its inception in 2013, ARYSE has been an amalgamation of so many individuals’ ideas, talents, and dreams; each season of this organization’s life has been defined by the people who’ve brought their whole creative and visionary selves to building toward a world that values how important our youth are to its future. We want to bring you in, because creating transformative change requires all of us.
Jenna with our PRYSE Academy volunteer planning team in 2017.
Another goal of this new effort is to help us stay grounded on what remains within our power amid the overwhelming actions of the new federal administration and the constant flood of media information. So many of us are rightfully anxious about the future of our world, and amidst that chaos, it’s easy to lose our grounding in the everyday work that we can and must do to bring us closer to the vision we have for our communities. As we navigate the weeks, months, and years ahead, your ongoing support of our work will be critical; by sharing these perspectives, we hope to not only highlight the ongoing efforts of our students, team, and partners, but also to ensure you feel informed and connected.
To launch this new series, I’m excited to share ARYSE’s updated vision statement, mission statement, and values, which were developed through a community-driven strategic planning process guided by our friends at Procopia. Here’s what we came up with, and I hope it inspires you!
Vision: ARYSE envisions a future where refugee and immigrant youth, grounded in the power of their knowledge and experiences, confidently lead communities and thrive in a world that celebrates their voices. In this world, their representation in leadership is commonplace, and our community thrives in understanding, celebrating, and learning from their wisdom.
Mission: ARYSE supports immigrant and refugee youth with backgrounds of forced displacement in accessing the resources they need to feel confident, engaged, and celebrated. Through advocacy and out-of-school-time programming that focuses on building skills and a sense of community, ARYSE affirms youth’s identities and works alongside them to achieve their visions for their futures.
Values:
Youth-centered: We prioritize youth voices and leadership in all decision-making, ensuring their vision guides our work.
Equity: We prioritize the distinct needs, identities, and experiences of our youth in designing all aspects of our work to ensure accessibility and alignment with their goals.
Collaboration: We build trusting relationships within our team and with partners, families, and communities, knowing shared goals require collective effort.
Intentional: We respond thoughtfully to critical and emerging needs, aligning with community and partner priorities to ensure our work is deliberate, impactful, and done with care.
Celebration: We infuse joy into our work, celebrating the cultures, knowledge, creativity, humor, and diversity of our community.
The aforementioned strategic planning process came after over a decade of developing our work in response to existing gaps and community needs. We needed to take a step back and figure out how we document our impact, articulate our approaches, build new strategic partnerships, and navigate recurring challenges. While we still have a ways to go in achieving all of the 80 actions (yikes!) we committed to in the final strategic plan, there are several we’ve already made headway on and feel really proud of, including:
Establishing the Post Secondary Support Program to support ARYSE youth in preparation for and transition from high school and address systemic barriers commonly faced by immigrant youth in accessing post-secondary education, training, and employment (thank you, Posner Foundation!)
Hiring a Youth Advocacy and Education Specialist to establish our values-aligned advocacy strategy and guide a youth-driven policy agenda
Develop a training in healing-centered engagement to ensure all interested stakeholders, namely school district partners and ARYSE staff, have a shared understanding and commitment to approaching the work from a systems-thinking lens
Establishing a Counterstorytelling Librarianship program to be implemented across ARYSE programs (thank you, Remake Learning - Moonshot!)
Identify and secure an office space that is aligned with existing needs and anticipated/desired growth – stay tuned for an exciting announcement coming soon!
Our staff, board, and Youth Steering Committee at a bowling mixer in December.
If you made it all the way to this point in the blog, wow, and THANK YOU, for being such a meaningful partner in this work. In the coming months, you’ll see a variety of topics covered here from a diverse group of ARYSE stakeholders, including staff, students, board members, and partners. This blog will come in addition to our regular monthly newsletter, which focuses exclusively on our program updates, events, and fundraising campaigns. If you’d like to opt out from the blog, you can unsubscribe by following this link.
These kinds of essays typically end with an inspiring quote, right? I’ll share one by adrienne marie brown I’ve had on a post-it note on my desk since January. I hope it brings you similar hope and wonder about our future together:
How would we organize and move our communities if we shifted to focus on what we long for rather than what we are negatively impacted by?