UMBA Charity Challenge 2021

Project Success, is a grassroots, not-for-profit, Community Learning Center, located in the heart of Ogden. Our motto is “Keeping Hope Alive” and we work with youth and families to help keep dreams alive and imagine a world where they contribute and participate in its positive growth and prosperity.  We do so by opening doors of opportunity to celebrate arts and culture, support and celebrate academic foundations, and promote health and wellness.

Project Success began as a response to “Community Call to Action” to address the drug arrest and use and associated criminal activity in Ogden’s inner city. Betty Sawyer, along with the late Reverend Leander Coates, invited residents to a Town Hall Meeting at the Marshall White Community Center.  Over 100 residents, along with representatives from the Ogden NAACP, local congregations, sororities, and other civic groups, and Hill Air Force Base, came together to look at community challenges and community assets. Participants identified a lack of opportunities for youth and a lack of jobs, police issues, and limited activities for an out-of-school time, to name a few.  There was not an organization at the time to fulfill this mission, so Project Success was born! Project Success provided one of the first after-school programs in Ogden and has provided continuous services since its inception in 1989.

Project Success has a Summer of STEM (SOS) program for diverse students centered on the topics of science, technology, entrepreneurship, and math (STEM). Three key geographic areas have been chosen to provide summer services to a wide range of communities in the Salt Lake - Ogden area. The locations are centered around the cities of Ogden and Salt Lake and additional outreach towards the greater Utah county area.

The SOS program seeks to establish a bridge between the skills gap in STEM among children of diverse communities. As we move forward into the future of 21st-century work and the fourth Industrial Revolution we are finding that the closure of the skills gap around STEM and 21st-century skills is critical for the advancement of equity and the future prosperity of the state of Utah and the country. This with the changing demographics of the United States becoming even more ethnically diverse has created a need to ensure that this population of emerging leaders have access to quality STEM content and programs designed to engage our community in skills needed for the 21st century. The funds provided by this grant would allow for local staffing and purchasing STEM education resources from our partner 21stCentEd to support a successful summer program emphasizing foundational STEM and 21st-century skill development for 4-12 grade students. The SOS program will be a springboard to continue offering opportunities for 4-12 grade students into the fall semester. Students who either finish or want to continue learning will have access to 21stCentEd’s 46 (and counting) project-based and mastery-based online courses. The fall program will continue as an afterschool program and tie in additional career exploration opportunities as students enter high school, including internship and mentoring. Students would be encouraged to mentor younger students also participating in the program.  

Funds raised would be used for student licenses for STEM content, training, support, and professional development for local teachers, mentors, and/or volunteers, laptops, and to support program mentors.