About Our Organization

Grow Your World (GYW) is a nonprofit organization that operates a youth-driven community engagement and development program. GYW is grounded in the belief that equity and access benefit everyone and create win-win-win dynamics for people, the community, and the planet.​

​The mission of Grow Your World is to connect community members through multigenerational and inclusive relationships that build sustainable personal and professional enrichment opportunities.

​The vision of Grow Your World is a vibrant and interconnected community that equitably enriches all of its members socially, emotionally, intellectually, and economically.

​The values of Grow Your World are community, abundance, and empowerment. 

Values Defined:
​Community is defined as reverence for diversity by practicing listening, respect, accountability, integrity, and inclusion in all relationships.
Abundance is defined as equity and ingenuity through relationships that develop social, emotional, and economic opportunities for thriving.
​Empowerment is defined as mutual and reciprocal opportunities for learning and sharing; we can all grow!

Foundational Practices

Our organization builds workshops and organizational practices based on these foundational practices:

Racial Equity: Maintain a vigilant eye toward implicit and explicit bias that cause individual, institutional and structural racism so that we can name it and the harms it causes so we can then design and implement actions that remedy disparities based on race to live in equity and counteract biases.

Resilience: Support community capacity for growth and thriving by noticing instances of antisocial and disruptive behaviors individually, interpersonally and community-wide, and provide individuals tools for fostering self-awareness, healing and empowerment while also providing space for the community to recognize its biases and judgments that entrench antisocial behaviors so that it can choose prosocial responses. 

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Our Program Aims

The program aims to increase :

1. Community connections across differences (age, culture, race, language, class, religion, political party, you name it)
2. Social, emotional, and economic well-being
3. Resilience, confidence, and ability to thrive of Grow Your World participants

We believe by connecting diverse people through learning and sharing productive and life-giving activities, we will build bridges and   counteract misunderstandings between peoples.
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Further, these connections open doors to opportunities that can create financial stability through fulfilling jobs for individuals, their families and the community at large.

​This, in turn, increases community wide potential for economic development. By building relationships, people can share their skills and their time to better themselves, each other and our community. And have fun!

To see how we implement these aims with our virtual opportunities, click below!

Virtual Opportunities

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​More Details and Definitions

• ​​Youth: are interested in expanding their capacity to thrive and impact their communities by learning and job shadowing with adults, practicing communication skills, and developing neurological skill for thriving. Participants in our virtual opportunities are middle schoolers from all over. We champion youth from a wide variety of economic, racial, cultural, and experiential backgrounds and are excited to support them develop their interests, skills and capacity for thriving. Apply for middle schoolers here. 

• Administration team: focuses on outreach and building relationships with community and families.
  
  
• Research team: focuses on finding resources that allows us to build content that aligns with our vision and values.
  
  
• Workshop team: focuses on youth development and supporting youth confidence and character building through the thoughtful creation of socio-emotional workshops.

• Community Mentors: Community members who are enriched by the hobbies, skills and professions in their own lives who want to share one or more of those activities with young people. Community mentors offer an hour or more of their time to bring a team of youth into their workspace or community space to have a hands-on experience of these activities to open young people's eyes to potential outlets for the youth's skills and interests. Community mentors will receive time in our timebank for all time contributed to support youth. Inquire here to be a Community Mentor.
  
  
• Core Competencies: the four main skills we want our youth to take away from our curriculum and workshops; these include racial equity, resilience, teamwork, and reflection.
  
  
• Racial Equity: facilitators maintain a vigilant eye toward implicit and explicit bias that cause individual, institutional, and structural racism so that we can name it and the harms it causes; we can then design and implement actions that remedy disparities based on race to live in equity and counteract biases.
  
  
• Resilience: facilitators support community capacity for growth and thriving by noticing instances of antisocial and disruptive behaviors individually, interpersonally and community-wide, and provide individuals tools for fostering self-awareness, healing and empowerment while also providing space for the community to recognize its biases and judgments that entrench antisocial behaviors so that it can choose prosocial responses; the goal is to promote a state where people experience positive emotions, well being, positive psychological functioning and positive social functioning more and more.

     

• All adults who participate in the program will be screened and background checked. Our program is fully insured.

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Get Involved!

Sign up now

sign up to be a community mentor

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