What Is Our History?

Step It Up, Inc. was founded in 2003 to address the need for career-aspiring high school teens in Portland’s inner city to gain access to professional career work experience, training, and mentoring. Before applying for non-profit status, our founders researched the need for this organization by talking with leaders from existing youth development nonprofits to ensure there was no duplication of services; by asking businesses if they could and would provide relevant work experience and mentoring for students; and by interviewing high school staff and teens to verify teen interest in work experience and training. The need, commitment, and interest were, and still are, substantial.

So we began serving youth in 2004, through the Internship Program with program components that follow the Search Institute’s 40 Developmental Assets for 6th-12th graders. Our focus was, and still is, on youth career development. The outcomes of our teen interns from 2004 to 2007 show that their pilot Internship Program is extremely successful:

• 40% of the students have been hired by their sponsoring business or institution partner.
• 80% have maintained contact with their mentors.
• 100% have earned career-related learning experience to meet high school graduation requirements.
• 100% have graduated high school.
  
• 100% have new employment connections for the future.
• 100% have gone on to attend college!

Since 2004, two new programs have been developed to support youth success in school and the workforce. After working with the teens in our Internship Program and talking with school staff, families, and our business partners, we recognized the need for two additional programs to achieve our mission successfully. It was clear that the youth we were serving needed ongoing long-term support.

In 2005, the Career Achievement Mentoring Program was developed from the need for our internship youth to have ongoing support in completing Free Assistance for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), college, and scholarship application forms, as well as access to additional resources for educational and career success. Every year we connect teens with new scholarship opportunities so they can complete their college education, usually while working.

In 2006, the Pre-internship Program was implemented because high school freshman and sophomores were eager to become involved in exploring and achieving their career goals but were not old enough to participate in the Internship Program.This program focuses on building each youth's self-confidence in their natural abilities, online career exploration and testing, college campus tours, as well as online college and scholarship research.

With the addition of these two programs, we now serve youth as incoming high school freshman through the age of 24. The main focus of our programs is directly providing summer learning experiences.

Our Pre-internship and Internship Programs were originally developed in response to research that repeatedly shows that participation in after-school and summer programs improves teen academic success, enhances teen opportunities for career development, and advances teen's life outcomes:

• Research from 2007 shows that “low-income youth suffer significantly from a loss of academic skills over the summertime. And the losses pile up, contributing to an achievement gap that can make the difference between whether students set out on a path for college or decide to drop out of high school” (Karl Alexander, John Hopkins University, 2007).

• This same research also shows that low-income youth progress at the same rate as their peers during the school year, but not during the summer when there is a dramatic difference. Those youth whose families can afford to pay summer learning activities continue to progress, whereas the low-income youth does not. Summer programs definitely make a difference for low-income youth (Karl Alexander, John Hopkins University, 2007).

The need for the pre-internship and internship programs are now even greater with the Oregon Department of Education’s new high school graduation requirement for career-related learning experiences (CRLEs). This requirement will likely make it even more difficult for some teens to obtain a diploma. By 2013, over 50,000 Oregon high school teens will be required to obtain CRLEs in order to graduate.

We have been working to address this statewide deadline for six years and are working on bringing our programs to scale in order to effectively and efficiently serve greater numbers of youth. Eventually we plan to be marketing our program materials nationally to meet the demand from east coast callers to access our materials and start their own programs.