- Rise 1000x is the Black Youth Success Movement.

- We are a member-driven organization that promotes, supports, and celebrates Black Youth Success

- Our mission is to ensure all Black Students achieve reading proficiency and achieve their full potential in academics and careers

- We are working to achieve equity in education for all students

- Rise 1000x is a chapter-based organization where each chapter is empowered to help Black Students in their community achieve academic success

- All students are welcome

- Our strategy is for the Black Community to demonstrate a solution that solves the reading crisis and have Black Students lead the way to solve the crisis nationwide for all students

- We believe this process will help to establish intellectual and educational equity and respect

- We believe the success will also open up the educational system to a better better approach to help all students succeed

- The current system and approach are clearly not working for most students

- Black Students face a significant academic performance bias

- Only 16% of Black 4th grade students scored proficient on the 2022 NAEP reading assessment compared to 41% for White 4th grade students

- Public education cannot focus on providing anything special to one ethnic group vs. another despite the need

- A community approach with families is the only approach to meet the needs of the majority of Black Students

- This is a long-standing failure

- More information, rise1000x.org/program.

- Reading proficiency scores have stagnated and gone down during the pandemic response

- More of the same is not working and waiting for the system to address the need is not working

- Learning to read proficiently requires the development of a broad range of skills

- Most students have a skill gap which the current system does not address adequately

- Until the system recognizes the full range of skill development required and meets the needs of each student holistically, failure will continue

- Yes, but only if the school will provide adequate support and flexibility

- We are currently developing more data to overcome barriers to the acceptance of our approach in schools.

- On average, Students of Color and Students experiencing poverty face a greater range and intensity of early childhood stressors which negatively impact school readiness

- Families, on average, don’t have adequate resources to provide their children with the developmental experiences that prepare students to do well in school

- Because of the added stressors and limited resources, a greater percentage of Children of Color and Children experiencing poverty enter school with a skill gap. This makes learning in the current system more challenging

- Our approach is holistic and provides a broader range of training experiences that help to close the Skill Gap

- The current approach only addresses a narrow range of skills. This approach works for students who have sufficient foundational skills

- Traditional schooling does not adequately work for students who have a skill gap.

- Reading proficiency is foundational to academic and career success

- Studies show that students who are not proficient in reading by 4th grade are significantly more likely to underperform academically, drop out of school, require public assistance, or face incarceration

- Our focus is grades K-3 to ensure students achieve reading proficiency by the end of 3rd grade to avoid frustration and remediation

- Our approach can also work for students in 4th grade and above, including adults, to help them close the Skill Gap

- However, older students who struggle have learned how to compensate and carry the burden of their struggle which impacts mindset

- More work must be done to evaluate and address the causes, correct compensation strategies, and create the proper mindset so the training can work effectively

- There is a long list of learning experiences we work to provide though each village that helps build a well-rounded skill set

- We focus on skill development

- We work to empower each student to have a growth mindset, strong social emotional skills, and access to resources

- We work to ensure students and their families meet there basic needs and know how to connect to resources

- We build community to foster purpose-driven communication that connects members to one another and to resources

- We work to connect families and students to organizations as appropriate to effectively meet their needs

- We try to avoid duplicating resources, but we help to enhance the effectiveness of utilization

- We offer a proven set of tools that help to solve the reading crisis which no other program has been able to do to date

- We do not compete with existing programs that provide services and programs to our target market

- The Village works to connect members to local resources and partner with local programs

- We do not wish for cost to be a barrier

- The basic program cost is about $100 per student per year of training

- However, there is significant effort that goes into organizing each village and working with families

- The cost depends upon the mix of volunteers and paid staff

- We also may need incentives to motivate students and recognize success

- The type of incentives and costs may vary by community

- We also want to host regular meetings but can only do so based upon availability of resources

- We also want to help families meet basic needs as appropriate

- So, the total cost per student can range from $500 to over $1,000 depending upon the situation

- We will provide what we can based upon availability of resources

- There is a lot we can do based upon a volunteer model with limited funding

- As we grow, recruit more endorsements, create more partnerships, demonstrate success, we believe we can raise significant donations and grants to fund the Movement

- We will also work to create youth-driven businesses to help provide funding

- Once we have more data, we believe that more schools will want to participate

- We provide a platform to organize and educate families and communities and guide them to solving the education gap for Black Students

- We provide a set of proven online training tools that can help most every student achieve reading proficiency and significantly improve cognitive skill processing

- We help to connect families and students to community resources

- Through Villages, we work to provide a broad range of experiences to students to build a more complete skill set

- Mindset skills

- Cognitive processing skills

- Reading skills

- We have a national organization based in Akron, Ohio.

- We are working to establish Chapters in every community

- Within each chapter, we organize by smaller villages which are typically based upon the boundaries of elementary schools in the area

- A Village can also be based upon an existing community organization service area

- Villages are established and run by residents

- Village leaders recruit Family Ambassadors to engage and support participating families

- Ideally each family would interact with local resources

- However, it will take time to create enough chapters and villages

- As we recruit enough volunteers and build resources to hire staff, we will interact remotely with families wishing to participate where there is no village yet

1. Join

   -Add your voice to the Movement

   -Keep track of progress and look for opportunities to help

2. Spread the word

   -Post information about the Movement on your social media

   -Reach out to people and organizations you think could benefit from or help the Movement

3. Support

   -Donate

   -Buy a shirt or other wearable item

   -Help us connect to organizations you know who might support the Movement

   -Help us write grants

4. Participate

   -Volunteer

   -Have your children or children you know participate in the Movement

   -Build a Chapter or Village in your community

- “Rise a thousand times”

The song “Rise Up” by Audra Day, is an inspirational song about never giving up. The chorus says “ I will rise a thousand times again and again. We want to empower our children and their families to  continually rise up and overcome life’s obstacles.