Our Founder Vicky, participated in the Pitch Night of Communitas America on Inspiring Futures’ behalf! Communitas America currently has 11 Cohorts of entrepreneurs in their program. Inspiring Futures is part of Cohort 11 along with 19 other NYC-based entrepreneurial ventures. Cohort 11 met twice a week for 12 weeks to work on gaining skills and accelerating their businesses. Pitch night was to showcase the ventures and growth. The cohort, audience, and external judges voted on several categories of prizes. Inspiring Futures won a $5,000 grant for Venture Viability at Pitch Night!
We were lucky to be able to partner with Rachel G. Barnard, who founded Young New Yorkers over a decade ago, which is a non profit organization that helped over 1,400 young people avoid jail and the criminal legal system through engagement with the arts. She featured Inspiring Futures and our founding story in a recent newsletter.
What better way to end the year than sharing a recent student success? Here is a recent client success story of Inspiring Futures (name changed for confidentiality)! Z enrolled in Inspiring Futures while in college. He was active in campus programs and jobs and was having trouble managing his time. He described having panic attacks, anxiety, and recurring intrusive thoughts, as well as difficulty concentrating and poor memory. He had been placed into foster care his senior year of high school. He was paired with an educational specialist and a therapist. Educational Specialist: She discovered Z was drinking three energy drinks a day to help him manage. They worked together in reducing his caffeine intake. They came up with breathing exercises, breaking goals into smaller steps, and writing things down to help with his anxiety and time management. At the beginning of each week, Z shared his priorities with his educational specialist and they worked together in figuring out how to manage them throughout the week. Towards the end, they also worked on finding a job, and moving. Therapist: She helped Z work through his intersecting marginalized identities and shifting his perspective away from blaming himself for entering foster care since his family could not accept his sexual orientation. They worked on self-regulation and coping skills to assist with panic attacks and anxiety, as well as processing trauma and increasing boundaries to improve concentration and reduce intrusive thoughts. Midway through senior year, Z had a significant loss in his family, which caused many symptoms to resurface, but they worked through this by adding grief work as well. Outcome: Z graduated on-time with his bachelor’s degree and landed a job in his field of study upon graduating. He has continued to work with the therapist by his request. Z has kept his job, gotten a dog, and has successfully transitioned to living independently. Due to stabilization, Z’s last session with his therapist is scheduled for the first week of January. Z shared that it helped him to have a team of people who customized the treatment approach to his situation. He shared past providers had high turnover rates and it helped him to have the same individuals working with him through his time in the program.
Looking forward to 2024: In the new year we are so excited to start in two additional accelerator programs, Camelback Ventures and the Edwin Gould Foundation Accelerator. We have an amazing full-time therapist starting the beginning of January. We also have a new physical address noted below. Inspiring Futures has so much more in store for 2024 and we can’t wait to share it all with you. To keep up with us throughout the year, our social medias and website are all linked below. See you next year!