Year Up Celebrates 20-Year Anniversary and 30,000 Students Served with Virtual Event on "Powering the Movement"

BOSTON, Sept. 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Celebrating twenty years of its proven, life-changing program, the national nonprofit Year Up announced today that it will be bringing the Year Up community together to advance its mission and honor its students and graduates in a virtual event on September 16, 2020 at 7 pm ET. The event will focus on Powering the Movement and accelerating economic and social justice across the U.S.

As part of the celebration, Year Up alumnus and University of Chicago PhD student Durrell Washington will interview Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), in a virtual fireside chat.

"We are grateful to our partners, supporters, and alumni who have helped us to Power the Movement for Social and Economic Justice for twenty years," said Gerald Chertavian, Year Up Founder and CEO. "This is a pivotal moment in America. The nation's top companies and leaders are awakening to the need for change to happen. We are witnessing an evolution of our understanding of Opportunity as we continue working with renewed hope and promise that we can—and will—close the Opportunity Divide in our country."

Launched in Boston in 2000, Year Up has since served 30,000 young people in 27 cities, connecting them with meaningful careers in high-growth industries such as business and IT.

Year Up anticipates more than one thousand virtual attendees will join the celebration, including corporate partners, donors, alumni and volunteers, potentially leading to thousands of new pathways to opportunities for young adults.

The celebration will be emceed by Jameela Roland, a Year Up Puget Sound 2017 graduate currently working at Microsoft, and will also feature speeches from Jalen Epps, a 2015 Year Up Greater Boston graduate working at JPMorgan Chase, and Beija Gonzalez, a 2018 Year Up Bay Area graduate working at LinkedIn.

To date, Year Up has raised more than $6 million from event sponsorships and its COVID-19 Impact Fund, which was established to help support Year Up and its students during the pandemic, including by supporting students' transition to virtual programming.

During the event, Year Up will add nearly 20 new inductees—select individuals and organizations that have been significant champions of Year Up's mission—into the Opportunity Hall of Fame. These include individual inductees Joe and Abigail Baratta, Paul and Sandy Edgerley, Garrett and Mary Moran, John Stanton and Theresa Gillespie, and Greg and Alicia Walton; corporate and corporate philanthropy inductees Harvard University, Kaiser Permanente, LinkedIn, The Workday Foundation and United; and foundation inductees Ballmer Group, Barr Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, The Boston Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Marcus Foundation, The Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation, and The Wyss Foundation.

Year Up students receive six months of technical and professional skills training, followed by a six-month internship at one of more than 250 corporate partner firms. Ninety percent of Year Up graduates are employed or attending college full-time within four months of graduation, earning average starting salaries of $42,000/year. In 2018, the federally-sponsored Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) evaluation of Year Up showed a 53% increase in initial earnings for young adults randomly assigned to Year Up compared with similar young adults in a control group—the largest impact on earnings reported to date for a workforce program tested in a randomized controlled trial.

About Year Up Inc.

Year Up is an award-winning, national 501(c)3 organization that enables motivated young adults to move from minimum wage to meaningful careers in just one year by providing the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their full potential. Through a one-year, intensive program, Year Up utilizes a high-expectations, high-support model that combines marketable job skills, stipends, coursework eligible for college credit, and corporate internships at more than 250 top companies. Its holistic approach focuses on students' professional and personal development to enable young adults with a viable path to economic self-sufficiency and meaningful careers. Year Up has served more than 30,000 young adults since its founding in 2000. Year Up is active in 35 campuses across the U.S., including Arizona, Baltimore, Bay Area, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Greater Atlanta, Greater Boston, Greater Philadelphia, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, the National Capital Region, New York City/Jersey City, Pittsburgh, Puget Sound, Rhode Island, South Florida, Tampa Bay, and Wilmington. Year Up has been voted one of the "Best Non-Profits to Work For" by The NonProfit Times. To learn more, visit www.yearup.org, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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SOURCE Year Up