March 2024: Spring Growth at The Upward Project

Originally sent by Mindy Wright on March 27, 2024. This archived newsletter includes announcements and deadlines from that time.

As the first quarter of 2024 comes to a close, we’re so excited to share updates on all the ways we are growing this spring, from our team’s expansion, to our Scholar recruitment progress, and how we’ve been continuing to uplift and amplify the work we do at The Upward Project, we have come a long way since 2018!

The Upward Project Welcomes Our Career Success Program Manager

"I am so excited to begin working with and getting to know our students, learning from the amazing TUP team, and continuing the work to break down barriers in education."

Earlier this month, The Upward Project welcomed our newest team member Eliana Al-Konsul as our Career Success Program Manager!

Originally from Madaba, Jordan, Eliana came to the U.S. in 2018 to attend Bates College as a first-generation college student and graduated with a bachelor's in psychology and anthropology. While at Bates, Eliana was involved in many student support and mentorship opportunities, both locally in the Lewiston community and on campus to peers, providing academic and professional guidance.

2024 Recruitment: Priority Cycle Highlights & Rolling Cycle

The Upward Project application process is well under way as we’ve been recruiting our 7th cohort of Scholars over the past three months! Our Priority Application Cycle yielded nearly 100 nominations from 26 Boston-area high schools. We were especially proud that almost 40% of nominations were from Community Based Organizations (CBO), given our intentional outreach efforts in the fall.

We are now looking forward to completing our cohort of 15 Scholars via our Rolling Application Cycle, which opened Monday, March 18th. In this cycle, we will be accepting nominations and moving students through our application process in the order we receive them until we have a full cohort.

This year, The Upward Project team committed to in-person office space at the One Lincoln WeWork office in downtown Boston. In a short amount of time we have built a strong community at WeWork, which led to participation in a Lunch & Learn panel and presentation in honor of International Women’s Day as a way to uplift female-led companies and organizations.

The Upward Project Co-Founder and Executive Director, Mindy Wright, was joined by Board Chair Claire Newton, and Program Manager Diana Alvarado to present the work of our organization. We look forward to building more connections with the greater WeWork community.

We are so excited to continue growing as an organization and are thankful for your support. We look forward to following up in June with internship highlights and debuting our newest cohort!

If you are interested in connecting with The Upward Project, please fill out our engagement interest form. A member of our team will reach out to you.