ACLP August Updates

Welcome ACLP Family,

My name’s Marissa Kesse and I am the program director of the African Community Learning Program. But, first and foremost, what is the African Community Learning Program? It’s a network of people who love, support, and promote the excellence of the African diaspora, sharing their love of their African origins and appreciation for the African culture. ACLP is based in West Philadelphia as an educational, nonprofit organization; this year, we will be launching a new program known as the Future Scholars Program.

What exactly is FSP you may ask? The Future Scholars Program is a free, college preparatory mentorship program serving Black high school students of the African diaspora. Our program aims to help students grow culturally and academically. As descendants of the diaspora, sometimes we can forget the power our culture and history hold. We can face personal struggles maneuvering through high school, including bullying and feeling misunderstood. FSP hopes to fill in some of these gaps by providing mentors to talk you through some of these struggles as well provide a culturally-aware curriculum to help students become confident and empowered in their identities. We hope to see students be their strongest selves, both personally and confidently. We also hope to equip students with the tools necessary to effectively deal with both personal and cultural problems.

We are so excited to have you join us this fall! This summer, the team has been working long and hard to make sure we provide you all, the students, with the most swift and resourceful transition. Our leadership team includes a new curriculum developer, social media manager, editor, writer, fundraising manager, website manager and external communications liaison. Our team of diverse minds and identities have come together to work on a program that is fun and invigorating, and we are so excited to share with you what we’ve been working on. Over the summer, Bing (our website genius) worked to rebuild our entire website from the bottom up! Christine (our social media queen) has put together posts that are appealing to the eye, insightful, and interactive; be sure to check out all her hard work by following our Instagram (@weareaclp), and liking our Facebook page! Amy (our wizard writer) spent the summer researching and writing exciting articles about cool people and places students would be interested in! Steele (our eccentric external comm. liaison) spent the summer compiling important college resources for students and putting them together in an organized, yet fun way; this newsletter you’re reading is all thanks to Steele, and future editions will include infographics about what we did during our sessions, important college dates to remember, and savvy advice from current college students. Obed (our competent curriculum developer) spent a great deal of time creating the impressive, culturally-informed curriculum that we are so excited to teach! This semester’s sessions will be entertaining and inspiring, allowing students to grow and learn. And finally, Lauren (our eloquent editor) had the team’s back, making sure to catch any mistakes and helping to make sure all our work was appealing to you all, the students.

So, as you can see, ACLP has created a strong team to make sure we provide our students with the resources they need. It is such an honor that I have the opportunity to lead this program and an even bigger privilege to be able to work with such bright high school students. We hope you’ll join us in the fall to see more of what we've been working on this summer because, as they say, the proof is in the pudding!

If you are ready to register, click this link and please fill out the information.

Warmly,

Marissa

For additional question, please email info@weareaclp.org