Upstate Class XXIII, Spring 2017

Cooking Up the Future seeks to alleviate some of the issues surrounding social mobility in Greenville. Greenville County is ranked twenty-fourth out of all the counties in the country for difficulty in terms of social mobility. The group identified an organization effecting important community change, Mill Village Farms, as a partner for the capstone project. Mill Village Farms has a paid summer internship program for high school students; the program is focused on students who come from low-income backgrounds.

Inspired by Nelson Mandela’s belief that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” the Teen Achievers Champions are partnering with the YMCA of Greenville to help enhance and grow its Teen Achievers Program, which has Mr. Mandela’s belief at the core of its mission. More specifically, the YMCA Teen Achievers Program is a free program with a proven track record of helping participants stay in school by:

Dream Weavers focuses on one of the least visible aspects of poverty: children who are not homeless, but within their homes, do not have a bed to sleep in. The Dream Weavers team was inspired by similar activities undertaken by agencies in only a handful of other cities. Those cities have recognized that their populations have a certain percentage of children in poverty who live in homes but without beds.