South LA and County Wide

The Intern Project (TIP)

The LA Promise Fund is committed to connecting high school students with the experiences and tools they need for future career success. The Intern Project (TIP) provides outstanding high school students from schools across LA County the chance to work in dynamic career areas through internships of four or more weeks during their summer break. Through TIP, students have worked in fields like digital media, entertainment, technology, health care, and design. These experiences can level the playing field for many students in Los Angeles. We empower student success; they change the trajectory of their careers. Learn more.

ArtsMatter

Research shows that arts-based education is correlated with increased academic performance, improved attendance, community engagement, and lower dropout rates. Through ArtsMatter, the LA Promise Fund works to create innovative programs designed to integrate arts education into all subject areas. Through pilot partnerships with CalArts, J. Paul Getty Center, The Music Center, Mattel and Urban Arts Partnership, the LA Promise Fund and LAUSD have identified and will continue to identify best practices in arts integration that will enrich the classroom experience and ultimately provide students with creative thinking skills that will last a lifetime. Learn more.

Health & Wellness/ School Fuel

The LA Promise Fund believes that healthy students are successful students. With the Mark Ridley Thomas Wellness Center at Manual Arts High School as our anchor, the LA Promise Fund and its many dedicated partners provide information, services, and healthy opportunities to all students and families in our network of schools. In parallel, our School Fuel initiative ensures that all public school students in LA get a nutritious start to their day and the supplemental knowledge to develop healthy habits for life. To date, School Fuel has facilitated Breakfast in the Classroom, parent engagement, and nutrition education in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Breakfast in the Classroom, now implemented by LAUSD, has been made available to over 500,000 students at over 650 schools in LAUSD.

Girls Build

Through the Girls Build Challenge, public middle and high school girls across the country are designing and implementing community-based solutions that can effect widespread change. Girls Build empowers these students to identify the challenges they face and provides them with resources and support to address them.

The Challenge is organized across three critical impact areas: Health & Wellness, Civic Engagement & Leadership, and STEM & College Access. The students from each participating team will build the skills necessary for effective leadership, like collaboration, communication, consensus-building, and project management. Learn more.

South LA Network for School Improvement (South LA NSI)

The South LA Network for School Improvement (South LA NSI), is a partnership of 12 schools located in South Los Angeles, committed to transforming outcomes for African-American, Latinx, and low income students. The South LA NSI will work with school-based teams to increase the number of students taking and passing the required college preparatory coursework (A-G) mandated by the State of California. This initiative takes a network approach, i.e., groups of schools work together to identify key common problem of practices and solve problems with local context for authentic change using continuous improvement process and analyses to achieve collective impact for South Los Angeles. This program is funded by a Gates Foundation grant.

Career Pathway Connections

Career Pathway Connections creates a collaborative regional approach to align K-14 pathways for student success by strengthening career pathways across SLATE-Z, a federally designated Promise Zone and collective impact partnership with the mission to revitalize South LA.

The program partners 10 local high schools with a local community college to create comprehensive career technical education pathways that develop experience and skills for college and career readiness through dual enrollment and workforce learning.

Strategies include articulated pathways, dual enrollment, career exploration events, competitions, showcases, summer pathway program and targeted marketing of pathways to high school students, parents, and counselors.

Amgen Biotech Experience

The Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE) is an innovative, hands-on science education program that encourages high school students to explore biology and biotechnology through the lens of scientists. ABE provides teachers with curriculum, training, and state-of-the-art lab equipment that allows students to learn core scientific concepts utilizing the same techniques used by biotechnology researchers. The result is an immersive, inspiring learning experience that links classroom learning to real-world application.  This work is funded by the Amgen Foundation.