MINNEAPOLIS — Project Success is celebrating 30 years of motivating young people to dream about their futures and create plans to get there.
According to a group of six 6th-grade gal pals from Minneapolis Justice Page Middle School,
an Emmy Award-winning shadow puppet play followed by a Q & A with the cast made for a worthwhile excursion Thursday. It was their first field trip with Project Success, though one of the nonprofit's facilitators introduced them to the organization back in fall.
"It was really cool," Ellen Herzog said of Manual Cinema's original production of Ada/Ava. "It like caught in my emotions and stuff because it was sometimes sad, sometimes it was happy."
"I really like how creative it was, showing like you can use other things to get many different ways of art," her friend, Wren Jagdfeld, added.
Thanks to Project Success, the girls and their peers paid nothing to bus over and watch the show at the University of Minnesota's Northrop theater. The nonprofit has partnered with Minneapolis Public Schools to provide free experiences like this since 1994.
"Yeah, Project Success turned 30 this year," said Laura Garcia, senior director of programming for Minneapolis. "Every single kid deserves the ability to dream big and to be exposed to new opportunities in the world … and then they can create their own definition of success."
Project Success started with just one school, North High, and today works with every middle and high school district-wide, as well as nine local alternative schools. According to its website, the organization uses "a proven methodology of experiential learning" called Dream Ignite Grow. Garcia says their work breaks down to 4 components: the arts, expeditions, career and independent living skills, in-class workshops.
In-class workshops involve various Project Success facilitators visiting the same classrooms each month for the whole school year. Students continue with programming through high school graduation, but may get a different facilitator certain years.
The organization has touched so many lives, even the gal pals' English teacher, Chloe Johnson, remembers the programming.
"It was only in my high school, not my middle school," Johnson explained. "I had an amazing person that really like let me know that whatever I wanted to do, I could do."
She's one of more than 225,000 alumni.
"We never leave a school, so when we enter in, it's forever," said Garcia, who has worked for Project Success for 16 years. "So the impact is generation after generation."
And counting.
"They've shown us a lot of good etiquette in theater and different parts of the arts," said Sophie Brix, another of the friends, "how sometimes you need to be quiet, sometimes you don't, and when's the, I guess, appropriate places to talk and be loud … I think it's really cool how they bring us to different places around Minnesota, and we don't just stay cooped up in one area."
"I am very grateful," Herzog added.
Project Success also gives students theater tickets outside of school time, and the nonprofit is always looking for volunteers to help with transportation. They also seek volunteer program leaders for an upcoming summer trip to the Boundary Waters, coaches to teach trades and skills and administrative support roles.
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