PLUS ME Project

The PLUS ME Project will inspire the next generation of creative arts professionals by bringing relatable role models from a variety of creative industries who will speak about their career pathways. While the field is slowly diversifying, there is still a large representation gap between the numbers of people of color currently working and the demographics of LA County. This guest speaker series will help demystify the many pathways into the creative arts by exposing youth to relatable role models who have found success in this growing field.

The PLUS ME Storytellers workshop series helps boost classroom and campus safety by cultivating self-awareness, self-confidence, and community connection within high school students in LA. Students build their stories by answering questions about who they are, where they have been, and where they are going. By doing that work together and sharing out with peers, students build empathy with and for each other, improving the culture of belonging in their classrooms and making them feel safer within their school campuses.

PLUS ME uses the art of personal narrative storytelling to empower youth in LA. Through our self-reflective journaling and dialoguing process, students increase their self-awareness, realize they are not alone, and learn how to vulnerably share their stories. Our project will help underserved high school youth reconnect with their peers while engaging with diverse role models, strengthen their oral and written skills to prepare for college applications and job interviews, and build confidence as they transition back to in-person learning.

PLUS ME Project will empower LA by providing the opportunity to CONNECT through the art of storytelling. Our team will recruit diverse adult volunteers and coordinate classroom visits throughout LA for them to share their stories with middle and high school students. We will host monthly story building training sessions for our volunteers and organize quarterly storytelling mixers where volunteers, students, and the public will have the opportunity to interact, inspire, and listen to each other's stories.

PLUS ME Project will recruit and train 1,000 individuals to share their stories with youth throughout Los Angeles. Through our partnerships with various school districts and charter organizations, we will bring our volunteers into hundreds of classrooms throughout the city to inspire the next generation through the power of storytelling. Together, we will help connect 1,000 relatable role models through our training sessions with over 25,000 students in one year.