Elevate New York

Elevate New York is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to build long-term, life-changing, relationships with youth, equipping them to thrive and contribute to their community. Elevate New York improves the lives of NYC public school students through four coordinated components: daily accredited classes, mentoring, adventure activities, and college and career training. Our holistic approach to youth development provides social-emotional support to youth as they explore new experiences and face new challenges; providing them with the foundation necessary to flourish into leaders.

Incorporated into all Elevate New York’s curriculum are thirteen character qualities designed to develop social-emotional skills and empower students to succeed. These thirteen skills and qualities are vision, courage, respect, caring, responsibility, positive work ethic, career-mindedness, communication, leadership, problem-solving, decision-making, and goal-setting. One of Elevates’ core beliefs is that creating a culture of selflessness and service is the foundation for leadership. Our students quickly learn that to serve others is to serve yourself and to serve yourself is to be the best version of oneself.

Our Programs

Accredited Classes: Students attended daily accredited classes taught in public schools. All Elevate New York high school classes are electives that count towards graduation. The year-long, five-days- a-week curriculum is centered around our thirteen-character qualities and is fully aligned with Common Core Standards and the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) Competencies. Students collaborate with each other and staff through experiential learning, group activities, and discussions. Once a week high school students visit neighboring schools and mentor fourth through sixth grade students on age-appropriate character qualities and skills. This allows Elevate New York students to master their skills by leading through example and empowers them to act philanthropically by giving back to their community through mentorship.

Mentoring: Our teacher-mentors spend fifty percent of their out-of-classroom time mentoring high school and middle school students. Mentoring occurs after school, on weekends, and during academic breaks and students have access to their teacher-mentors twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three-hundred-and-sixty-five days a year. Inherent to the success of our mission is the relationships between students and mentors and relationships do not pause at the end of the school day. This approach allows teacher-mentors to support the “whole child”- discovering their talents, interests, hopes, fears, and challenges both in and outside of the classroom. By building a relationship both in and outside the classroom, teacher-mentors become life-long, positive role models ultimately influencing the trajectory of a child’s future.

Adventure: Elevate New York believes that empowering youth to explore life beyond their comfort zone is an important aspect of leadership development. Our program utilizes new and challenging experiences as a tool to develop teamwork and leadership skills, in addition to building confidence and self-worth in our youth. Living in urban environments, many of our students have little access to nature. Therefore, lessons taught in the classroom are applied in hands-on activities such as rafting, skiing, snowboarding, and horseback riding. Not only does this reinforce our character qualities, but students are also taught they can do things they’ve never attempted before and begin to develop a love for the outdoors.

College and Career: Many of our students are the first in their families to attend college. Our college and career programming ensures that all our students have a plan for post-secondary success. We provide support for each step of the college admission process, exam preparation, applications, essay writing, scholarships, and admission interviews. In addition, we support students in career planning to develop a concreate post-secondary plan.

Our Impact

Elevate New York has served more than 2,300 students since 2009. In the 2020-2021 school year, Elevate students reported the following outcomes. 

-55% of students reported Elevate New York is the reason they passed their classes
-66% of students share their personal problems with their Teacher Mentors8
-85% of students help their peers when they are struggling 
-60% of students are not afraid to try new things 
-66% of students are engaged in school
- In 2021, the average GPA of an Elevate Student was a B-