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Impacting Charlotte Mecklenburg
Through the Thrive Global Project Local Hub, the Ready to Thrive (RTT) program provides low-income, high-achieving, first-generation college students with scholarships, resources and expert-led programming designed to help students have a more equitable college experience.
RTT was created to address the critical needs and gaps of local, low-opportunity, high-achieving Charlotte-area students. Our innovative program provides incentives and access to educational programming to help these students to have a more equitable college experience.
We host an annual RTT Summit that brings the RTT scholars together to learn from experts and engage with their peers. We also have the Ready to Thrive Hub available 24 hours a day, 365 days per year! The Hub is filled with virtual resources for when you need it MOST.
We introduce students to learning more about the unique ways that alcohol and drug abuse directly impacts life as college students. We empower students to learn about the risks associated with substance abuse on their campuses.
We guide students through personal finance and saving skills to set them up for success. From building a budget, to learning about credit and reducing debt, to introducing investing and more, our Financial Literacy hub and workshop aims to build a deeper understanding.
We aim to build mindfulness and mental resiliency among college students. Students learn the skills required to effectively navigate personal and emotional experiences on and off college campuses.
Students will manifest their dreams and learn steps to bring those to reality. With hands-on practical workshops, students will learn how to build a resume, brand themselves, the importance of internships, and how to begin their job search.
Designed by students just like YOU!
We partner with students with lived-experience to put them in the driver’s seat of our program development. In doing so, we make the programs more effective and relevant to students’ college experience.
Have a one-on-one simulated mock interview. During this process students work with a professional recruiter to learn the basics of interviewing for their dream job! Additionally, our team reviews student’s resumes- all for FREE!
Since its inception in 2020, Ready to Thrive has given over 250 scholarships/incentives to local students totaling over $150,000 in funding for school, savings, and basic needs.
Students face several barriers in their pursuit to attend and graduate college, including navigating the demands of school, financial-aid, and schoolwork without the resources needed to transition equitably from high school to college with limited resources. That’s where RTT comes in!
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, creativity, and collaboration to address complex challenges. It involves understanding the needs and perspectives of the people who are affected by the problem generating a wide range of ideas, prototyping and testing solutions, and iterating on them based on feedback.
Design thinking is a human-centered, approach to problem-solving that focuses on the user's needs and experiences. In our case, the users are low-opportunity college students. By involving students in the design thinking process, we tailor our TGP Local Hub to meet their specific needs and challenges.
Design thinking encourages collaboration and creativity, helping us generate new ideas and solutions with those that have lived experience.
This approach allows us to quickly iterate and get feedback from students quickly to ensure that the program is effective and impactful.
We have been using Design Thinking in RTT since 2021 with incredible results! In 2023, we partnered with a team of volunteers from Deloitte’s Step Up program to help us run a Design Thinking Lab with a group of 13 amazing students! Through this lab, we came up with a wireframe to house our RTT resources in a digital format.
The RTT program partners with several Charlotte area local nonprofits and businesses. Through these partnerships, we are able to offer wrap-around services and create more equiatable college experiences for local Charlotte students.
