Project Ready: Historical & Cultural Literacy
An Education and Youth Development Program
Project Ready’s Historical & Cultural Literacy Program seeks to provide youth with accurate, culturally relevant, and resonant curricula on the Black urban experience in America.
cultural literacy : the ability to investigate and think critically about the past in order to intellectually and creatively engage with the present
Project Ready: Historical & Cultural Literacy (HCL) empowers youth participants with positive images of themselves grounded in a historical legacy of commitment, leadership, and service that continues to positively shape the social, economic, intellectual, political, and cultural development of their community and the nation at large.
Through this dynamic National Urban League enhancement, Urban League affiliate staff expose youth to an important part of their history by investigating and documenting The Great Migration and how it led to the founding of the Urban League in their community and across the nation.
As participants in Project Ready: HCL, youth become knowledgeable about how they can be active participants in shaping service, scholarship, and progress in their community as a part of the next generation of civil rights leaders.
Our Approach
The opportunities we put forth in Project Ready encourage youth to make an investment in themselves, their communities, their peers, and their future. We do this through program activities that have an asset-based focus on leadership development, intellectual and academic development, and peer learning.
AS A PART OF OUR ONGOING INTENTION,
we continue to replicate our Project Ready standards and approaches throughout all the Urban League postsecondary success programs, thus paving the way to break ground for additional high-quality programs, curricula, innovations, and professional developments that are both effective and impactful for participants and staff alike.
To this end and due to the ever-growing need to address the lack of culturally relevant and historically accurate curricula on the African American experience and the larger African Diaspora, the National Urban League partnered with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, supported by State Farm, in order to develop an approach that would meaningfully prepare youth for the 21st century via a historical and critical examination of the Black experience in America throughout centuries. The curricula would not be as vibrant or impactful without the guidance and support of Vie Kaufman, the National Urban League’s Historian.
Lessons from Project Ready: HCL affords youth the opportunity to learn more about their communities, to tie the challenges of the past to the present circumstances that they face, to develop solutions to long-standing and emergent problems, to work on intergenerational projects, to develop service and oral history projects, and to deepen their commitment to the principles of leadership, service, and community.
Professional Development
THE WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR. CENTER FOR URBAN LEADERSHIP is the nonprofit educational institute of the National Urban League that exists to foster positive social and economic change through effective urban leadership development.
Its mission is to cultivate and enhance individuals and organizations serving urban communities' leadership capabilities. Its role is to serve as a convener to link those entities to practical leadership development tools and resources to help them address capacity issues and various leadership challenges.
“At first, Omaha seemed a little bit dull because there wasn’t much going on. But now I look at it differently from how I used to.”
—DARRICK SMITH, Project Ready student, HCL Video Project, Urban League of Nebraska
The philosophy is that through the enrichment and/or development of urban leaders, urban communities can be improved and empowered, thereby helping to create a society whereby all people have equal opportunities to be positive contributors.
Through this institute, the National Urban League’s Division of Education and Youth Development presents a series of professional development sessions in-person and virtually on a continuous basis. Our goal is to provide a full range of educational and youth developmental services to Project Ready managers across our affiliate family to ensure that they are fully prepared to take advantage of the opportunities ahead as we work towards our goal of having every American child ready for college, work, and life by 2025.
African Americans journeyed from the South to the North during The Great Migration between 1910 and 1970
ago, the National Urban League was created as an organized response to the plight of Black Americans in urban cities who needed assistance seeking work, housing, social services, and political representation.
Black-owned businesses came to fruition just 4 years into The Great Migration, up from only 5,000 on record in the U.S. prior to 1910
