I’m excited to share we pivoted to an internship/mentorship program. Due to low winter enrollment, it made me take a deeper look at how we can offer our creative workshops in a way where parents, caregivers and teens could see the value in what we are teaching them!

When we experience challenges, I do my best to approach it through an asset lens. I began asking questions like: How can we challenge the starving artist narrative? How can we get parents/caregivers to see the value in letting their teen participate in our programming?

That’s when a paid internship/mentorship concept was born. We are in an essence doing the same thing, but are being more strategic. We are training 5 teens in the areas of photography, film, brand identity, social media strategy and more, while partnering with businesses and organizations in the community. So that our interns can learn to collaborate and gain real world experience as they grow their portfolios….all while getting paid.

Getting paid was a necessary decision if we truly want to be an organization that believes in equity, in which, we consider the needs of our community and actually help to create solutions for those needs.

We are excited for our first paid 12 week internship and can’t wait to see where it goes!

So friends, I’m excited to share our very first cohort of interns with you!

You can learn more about them HERE!