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Your investment uplifts Summer Searchers intro critically-conscious leaders and thriving adults.
The Summer Search journey begins with recruiting high school sophomores who take part in 1:1 and group mentoring to prepare them to participate in two transformative summer experiences in their sophomore and junior years.
Thanks to our incredible community of summer program partners, thousands of Summer Searchers have had life-changing experiences.
In 2024 we worked with 80+ program partners across our five communities (Bay Area, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle) to send nearly 700 participants on domestic and international experiences, ranging from outdoors, academic, art and creative based, community service, and social justice programs.
Going forward, we are expanding our partnerships, especially with programs that are owned/led by Women and/or BIPOC individuals.
Know any amazing programs, orgs, or people we should partner with? Refer them here!
Thanks to the support of so many who have devoted their lives to the development of young people, thousands of Summer Searchers have had life-changing experiences. We pay tribute to the organizations whose scholarships and equipment donations make this possible.
Summer Search students — the majority being People of Color and first-generation individuals from low-income communities — face systemic barriers that block access to high quality education, mentoring, opportunities for growth, and professional networks.
We partner with our young people in navigating these systemic barriers so they can achieve economic equity and a life of purpose.
We consider a ‘transformative experience’ to be a summer experience that aligns with our four Depth Mentoring frameworks: Trauma Sensitivity, Social Emotional Learning, Critical Consciousness, and Adolescent Development.
We believe that when summer experiences align with these research-backed frameworks, they allow our participants to do the following:
Students of Color
Summer Search aims to partner with organizations that can provide experiential learning opportunities to our participants.
Transformative experiences serve as a core element to our program model which, combined with long-term mentoring, creates an action-and-reflection sequence that can contribute to key adolescent development milestones related to ‘thriving’ such as identity formation, educational achievement, and a sense of purpose.
When exploring partnership, we look for partners that can do the following:
To honor our participants’ demographics and their experience, we are currently looking to partner with BIPOC or Women Owned and/or Led programs that are community-centered and provide opportunities for social justice learning, outdoor education, and/or paid internship experiences.
We honor our program partners and support their growth as part of the Summer Search community. We invite all partners to commit to upholding our community agreements within the collaborative work of youth development programming. When partnering with Summer Search you also receive:
Direct funding and access to a philanthropic network.
Program assessment and evaluation support.
Access to a learning network with 60+ youth development programs across the country.
*If you think your program is a good fit for our participants, please fill out our interest form and someone from our team will reach out within three (3) weeks.
*If you are a participant, parent, or community member and want to recommend a program, please also complete the interest form. We can can’t wait to hear from you!