A Letter From Our Executive Director |
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To the Project LEARN Community,
Looking back, 2021 was a year that tested us all. While the COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges to the students of Lowell and their families, it also spurred new opportunities to grow, expand, and innovate, both as individuals and as a community.
Despite the hurdles that our community and organization faced, we also saw many successes - From growing our Commencement 2 Careers program to offer more than 90 students paid internships, to installing two large-scale murals in our Downtown, to enrolling almost 500 students in Early College Lowell courses, our organization made delivering powerful initiatives to young people our #1 goal.
Mounting research shows how the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are profound on learning environments and the social-emotional health of our students. To respond to this crisis, our new Youth Innovation Space, opening next month, will give young people opportunities to connect with career professionals and each other, practice new skills, and gain tools to prepare them for life after high school.
This new year stands to be a historic one for Project LEARN. Since 2013, we have invested $11.5 million for programs that give students a brighter future, donated more than 38,000 books to in-need families around the community, and have saved recent Lowell High School graduates more than $1 million in tuition fees through Early College Lowell.
As always, our work to support the city's students takes a village. Project LEARN is honored to partner with the educators of Lowell Public Schools, UMass Lowell, Middlesex Community College. And of course, donors and volunteers like you make all of the difference in our mission to propel our students to success in 2022.
Sincerely,
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LZ Nunn
Executive Director
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Have You Heard About The Youth Innovation Space? |
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Our team is excited to announce the upcoming launch of the Youth Innovation Space (Y-Space), our new college & career programming center, Downtown!
The Youth Innovation Space will provide college & career skills and connections to students that reinforce their transition into adulthood, such as Google Coursera certifications, paid internships with local businesses, and professional development workshops that provide insight on financial literacy, navigating the hiring process, and more! Y-Space, which is set to launch next month, will be open to students Monday through Friday and is within walking distance of Lowell High, Middlesex Community College, and UMass Lowell.
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Be on the lookout for more Youth Innovation Space updates on our social media! |
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Some of the Project LEARN team members taking measurements in our new space! |
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A Student's Take on COVID-19 |
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March 13th, 2019 was the day my world shut down.
I kept hearing rumors that school was going to go on break for a few weeks, at least until things got better, but when week after week passed and the world remained home in quarantine, I was confused. What I thought was going to be a fun break turned into a frustrating, miserable, and isolating time in my life.
The first year of COVID-19 was very difficult. Life was so uncertain and constantly changing that it was hard to grasp on to and understand. When every aspect of your world gets disrupted, it feels like the rug was pulled from right underneath you. My whole life changed. School was different, visiting family was different, going to the grocery store was different, and especially the way I navigated through life was different. Before COVID, I never had to be afraid of someone coughing in public, or that a common cold was actually covid, and I sure didn’t have to worry about bringing a mask everywhere I went.
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Students Making Change in 2022 |
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Students Making Change, our student-led after-school group at Lowell High, has been hard at work discovering ways to end racial discrimination and inequities across our city and in the schools.
The program allows Lowell youth from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds to facilitate—with guidance, mentorship, and instruction from adult allies—a series of youth-led antiracism training sessions, dialogues, and learning opportunities for Lowell students, educators,
and community members.
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Thanks to the dedication of amazing Lowell educators like Kendra Bauer, these students are going to be busy in 2022! Later this Winter, the cohort will host an antiracism dialogue training for Lowell High 9th graders, as well as another, much larger, version of the workshop for Lowell community members, as a catalyst for initiating deeper conversations about structural bias, prejudice, and discrimination in our school system and community.
In the Spring, students will have the opportunity to work with local photographer, Henry Marte of Marte Media, in a documentary photo series that will capture images and first-person stories that represent and convey their lived experiences. The series will be exhibited in Project LEARN’s new Youth Innovation Space and as part of a citywide exhibit of student artwork in April 2022.
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Lowell's Very Own Superhero |
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Although it's no secret that the students at Lowell High are superheroes, Sam Stevquoah, an award-winning graphic novelist and LHS alumn, took that idea to the next level with his new series, Mill City's Finest.
In his fifth and latest graphic novel, Welcome to Mill City, Stevquoah introduces Aundre Weah, a Lowell high student by day and crime-fighting superhero, Momolu, by dismissal time. In the series, readers will get to see some of their favorite Lowell landmarks as animated drawings, like the Lowell Sun building and the City Hall clock tower.
Last November, Stevquoah made a trip back to the halls of Lowell High to talk with students about his experiences as an artist, storyteller, and entrepreneur and to give them their very own signed copies of Lowell's first-ever comic series.
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