Youth Development
Summer Programming 2024
Metro DEEP exposes and cultivates career and entrepreneurial interest among youth, with a focus on high-potential, in-demand fields through its Black Excellence and Youth Entrepreneurship Workshops.
In 2001, our founder wrote a life mission statement that reads, “One healthy generation of whole children”. We understand that our children and youth are our future. We also understand that they believe the adults in their lives ultimately have failed them - as parents and the village surrounding them - don’t have their backs and will ensure their success as long as they do what they are supposed to do. So they have stopped listening to an extent even though they are always watching us. From the old adage, transformed, "If it takes a village to raise a healthy child, what does it take to raise a healthy village?” We believe the answer is, a solid future orientation and an understanding of self. If you have those, you can never be a victim of oppression, systems, or circumstance… you can only be free to be whoever it is you want to be. but that takes the guidance, guarding and governing of our children - possibly even more importantly is experience outside of what they are used to… That is the focus of Metro DEEP programming, to alter behavior causing a positive future orientation.
Passion to Profit | Youth Entrepreneurship
Youth Entrepreneur Workshop is what it sounds like and it goes two steps further in our holistic programming foundations where youth will learn first about themselves and their personalities and then how to identify and work with a team. Then youth entrepreneurs will engage in learning how to turn an idea into a well devised, researched and planned presentation so that others not only see their vision, but are motivated to support and invest in it.
This 21-hour program focuses on engaging and encouraging our middle school and high school aged youth through providing a supported path to business development, skill enhancement, and collaboration that inspires the next generation of urban entrepreneurs.
This program features a non-traditional workshop that develops our youth’s entrepreneurial mindset through navigating the “world of start-ups,” including its risks and challenges, in a collaborative environment.
Through our efforts, Metro DEEP is committed to providing educational opportunities with goal oriented outcomes. We seek to work with strategic partners whose professional acumen align with each segment of our program’s content. Championing Black economic mobility as a key feature within our program, not only strengthens our collective reach, but more critically, it reinforces our youths' vision for themselves, their community, and what it means to thrive.
Black Excellence | Career Immersion
The overall purpose of the Black Excellence Curriculum is to build a future orientation for our youth. We recognize that many of the behaviors of our students and young people are connected to a loss of faith that they can be the greatness they have inside of them. But the more pictures they see of people who look like them doing great things and making a great living doing it, the more they begin to believe that they can too. Organically, mentorships will form, and no matter what, you cannot unsee what you have seen - hope replaces hopelessness, and desire is born.
Metro DEEP’s Black Excellence program is a series of field trips organized throughout the academic school year exposing students to African Descended professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders in non-traditional or high growth, high paying and high impact careers. Program participants will prepare a Black Excellence portfolio after each experience (throughout the year) and create a vision for themselves, which they will present to their parents, school staff, and community supporters during a “Rites of Passage” styled graduation ceremony.
Black Excellence Career Immersions are organized on an annual basis, which consists of planning multiple experiences and typically includes 50 - 100 students per experience, regardless of the district in which they reside. Currently Metro DEEP serves approximately 250 students annually through this program alone.
