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 a $500 scholarship 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.
In partnership with Wells Fargo.
This workshop teaches students 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, this workshop aims to build deeper financial literacy.
In partnership with Mecklenburg County ABC.
This workshop introduces students to learning more about the unique ways that alcohol and drug abuse directly impacts life as college students. The workshop helps them to learn about the risks associated with substance abuse on their campuses.
Presented in partnership with Wofford College.
This workshop aims to build mindfulness and mental resiliency among college students. During this workshop, students learn the skills required to effectively navigate personal and emotional experiences on and off college campuses.
In this workshop, student 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.
In 2023, we hosted our Design Thinking Lab in partnership with Deloitte.
We use Design Thinking in our RTT program design. Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to innovative problem-solving. 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 student’s college experience.
Since its inception in 2020, Ready to Thrive has given over 150 scholarships to Charlotte, NC college students totaling $98,000 in funding for school, savings, and basic needs.
First-generation students face several barriers in their pursuit to be the first in their families to attend and graduate college, including navigating the admissions process, financial-aid, and schoolwork without the resources needed to transition equitably from high school to college with limited resources.
Each scholarship recipient in the program receives a $500 check, made out directly to the student to use to support their transition to college.
This scholarship, coupled with the skills learned the RTT Summit, allows students to feel a personal sense of responsibility for how they choose to use the money.
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.
