Dear Greenhouse Scholars community,
I have some exciting news to share. Our Whole Person program is evolving! Why is this so exciting? At the center of our ability to make a lasting difference is this program. Essentially, it is the driver of our impact on our Scholars during their college years and the driver of our ability to help shape the impact they will have throughout their lives.
We are building the new program from a position of strength. We have ten years of positive results to build from. Far from an overhaul, this is about: 1) iterating on what has been successful and 2) adding where we believe we can do more with our Scholars.
We have two new program components – “Impact” and “Skills Modules”. We also have improvements we are implementing within all existing program components. At a high level, the Impact component will immediately increase our influence on the generation of young people coming behind our Scholars, as well as increasing our Scholar’s ability to have a greater impact throughout their lives. The Skills Modules is a technology enabled component that will provide our Scholars with more leadership and professional tools and skills. We will provide a thorough explanation of our program evolution in our annual newsletter that will be out to you in November.
To get to our new Whole Person Program, we spent eight months conducting primary and secondary research (including talking with many of our Scholars, our Mentors, community leaders in low-income neighborhoods, our alums, and education leaders across the country), brainstorming conceptual and tactical ideas with our sister company Greenhouse Partners, debating and discussing, identifying best fit with our vision and values, and building and iterating until we felt great about any changes. The process was thorough and thoughtful and everyone on the team that participated knows they were part of something that will shape our impact for years to come.
Our evolved program was unveiled to our Scholars at our Summer Symposium, and received with great enthusiasm.
I am proud of our team for the great work they did on this incredibly important project. I am excited about what our evolved program will mean for our ongoing pursuit of creating a community of leaders that will change the communities of the world.
Thank you for being an integral part of our growing community!
Peter M. Burridge
President and CEO