UrbanPromise Nashville

UrbanPromise Nashville Helping refugee and immigrant youth step into their God-given stories.

Earlier this spring, our students and StreetLeaders put pencil to paper 📝 and answered a simple prompt:“I am from...”The...
06/09/2026

Earlier this spring, our students and StreetLeaders put pencil to paper 📝 and answered a simple prompt:

“I am from...”

Their answers became poems.

Poems about identity, place, and belonging. About the people, places, memories, traditions, and experiences that have shaped who they are.

We paired their poems with portraits and drawings, created a gallery exhibit, and invited our community to come and see.

Then we recorded them reading their poems aloud. 🎙️

Over the next twelve days, we’ll be sharing some of those poems in stories—one each day, in their own voices.

Many of our students have been described by labels they didn’t choose for themselves—
Refugee.
Immigrant.
Asylee.

But these poems are an invitation to know our students beyond the labels often placed on them.

And they’re a reminder that every young person who walks through our doors has a story worth hearing.

Follow along over the next 12 days as we share our Where I’m From poem series.

The first one drops in stories today at 4 pm. 💗

05/30/2026

When Carla applied to become a StreetLeader, she wasn’t sure she would belong. She applied anyway. 

Today, it’s hard to imagine UPN without her.

Over the last four years, she’s been a StreetLeader, an intern, and one of the people helping create the same sense of belonging she once wondered if she would find.

This fall, she’ll begin her senior year at Tennessee State University studying political science and urban studies with dreams of serving communities around the world through nonprofit work.

When we asked Carla what promise she wants to keep for the next student coming behind her, she said:

“No matter where I’m at in life, I’m always going to come back.”

This is what five years of welcome, belonging, and becoming can grow.

🎥 Watch Carla tell it in her own words.

UrbanPromise kept its promise to Carla. Help us keep it for the next one. → Link in bio to give.

Saturday night, we gathered under the stars for one of our favorite traditions of the year: Senior Celebration.✨We share...
05/27/2026

Saturday night, we gathered under the stars for one of our favorite traditions of the year: Senior Celebration.✨

We shared a meal, laughed a lot, looked back on memories through the years, and ended the night with mentors speaking identity, blessing, and truth over each graduating StreetLeader.

This group has brought so much joy, leadership, creativity, humor, and care into our community, and we are incredibly proud of each of them.

They have collectively spent years showing up week after week as StreetLeaders, role models, and friends to our younger students. Watching them grow into who they are becoming has been such a gift!! 🩵

Here’s where our largest class ever is headed next:

🎓 Gideon — Vanderbilt University
🎓 Joelle — Vanderbilt University
🎓 Jissie — Vanderbilt University
🎓 Ivanka — Lipscomb University
🎓 Snowey — Nashville State 
🎓 Marco — Belmont University
🎓 Ingrid — Belmont University
🎓 Esther — Belmont University

We cannot wait to see how God uses their stories, gifts, and leadership to bring more good, beauty, and hope into the world. The future is bright. 🌎🤩

Class of 2026, OUT! ✌🏼

05/26/2026

Anna was born in a refugee camp. She came to us at 15 — shy, unsure, and hiding in the background. Five years later? Watch what happened. 🎬

Anna didn’t become a leader overnight. It happened week by week, year by year, surrounded by people who saw something in her before she could see it in herself.

“Because of UrbanPromise, I am able to use my voice. If it wasn’t for UrbanPromise, I probably wouldn’t even think about becoming a teacher.”

This summer, new StreetLeaders will walk through our doors just like Anna did five years ago.

Some of them don’t believe they’re leaders yet either.

That’s where becoming starts. 💛

If you give to UPN monthly, this is what your generosity makes possible:
A job that teaches a shy teenager how to lead.
A community that calls out what’s already there.

Link to support the next generation of leaders: urbanpromisenashville.org/donate

Read Anna's full story of becoming: https://www.urbanpromisenashville.org/post/a-shy-teenager-who-became-a-leader

Five years ago, we made three promises to every young person who walked through our doors. And we’ve kept them every day...
05/22/2026

Five years ago, we made three promises to every young person who walked through our doors. And we’ve kept them every day since.

Welcome.�You are welcome here, before we know anything else about you.

Belonging.�A place safe enough to laugh, fail, ask questions, and be fully yourself.

Becoming.�God created you with purpose, dignity, and beauty — and we’re going to keep reminding you of that until you begin believing it too.

That’s the heart of UPN.

It’s why Somaia now walks through our doors like it’s her second home. It’s why Carla, who once worried she wouldn’t fit in here, now says: “I felt like I belonged.” And it’s why Anna — who was once too shy to speak up — is becoming a teacher.

Three promises.�Five years.�$50,000 by World Refugee Day.

Help us keep the promises going for year six. 🙌🏼❤️

Link to give: https://www.urbanpromisenashville.org/

05/20/2026

Meet Somaia. 🦋

She came to Nashville from Afghanistan when she was four years old with her sister and two aunts. For two and a half years, she lived here without her parents.

We couldn’t close the distance between Somaia and her parents. But we could love her in the waiting.

While the rest of her family was halfway around the world, Somaia found herself woven into a community that deeply loved and welcomed her. And in February of 2024, after years of prayer, her parents finally arrived.

The reunion did not erase those years apart. But through it all, Somaia has remained full of light. ✨

She did not need to be rescued. What she needed was a community that would hold her story with tenderness for those two and a half years— and long after.

That kind of presence is what UPN exists to offer. 🌎🤍

Read her full story on our blog: https://www.urbanpromisenashville.org/post/her-name-is-somaia-she-is-a-promise-kept

Help UPN keep showing up: https://www.urbanpromisenashville.org/donate

“I burned my shoes.”That’s how Ivanka opened her scholarship application essay.Last summer, on our Trekkers trip to Wyom...
05/19/2026

“I burned my shoes.”

That’s how Ivanka opened her scholarship application essay.

Last summer, on our Trekkers trip to Wyoming, her sneakers got too close to the campfire. They were gone in a blink — and sitting there by the flames, she realized something:

“This reminded me how quickly the path I had laid out for my life was gone almost four years ago. And with it, my home and everything dear to my heart.”

Ivanka’s life changed on February 24, 2022, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. She writes, “That day I felt like I lost my shoes completely, forced to change them from one pair to another, an uncomfortable one and one I did not choose.”

In September 2024, she joined UPN. As a StreetLeader, she has planned lessons, led activities, made crafts with kids, talked about God, and laughed through reading buddies. She has found something she says she never would have seen in herself: leadership.

“UPN became my second home, or maybe, third.”

Ivanka has embraced every part of the StreetLeader program – going on trekkers trips, forming deep relationships with both fellow StreetLeaders and students, college counseling, Thursday night dinner and discipleship, even fully taking on the roll of an immigration officer at our Race for Refuge simulation event. (see last video 😂)

We’re honored to award Ivanka the inaugural Dale Clay Memorial Scholarship — $5,000 toward her studies at , where she plans to major in animation. She wants to tell people’s stories and bring hope and healing to those around her.

The scholarship exists because of Dale Clay — a beloved friend and UPN board member whose family, friends, and community donated to UPN in his honor after his tragic passing last November. Dale and Ivanka both had a calm presence, creative minds, a sneaky sense of humor, and were intentional about relationships.

“There is no time to walk around in burned shoes just because they remind me of the warmth I once experienced. Symbolically speaking, I realized I could finally let them go.”

We’re proud of you, Ivanka, and can’t wait to watch you spread your wings. 🕊️🇺🇦

Read her full essay: https://www.urbanpromisenashville.org/blog-1

Five years is long enough to learn what a promise actually costs.It costs showing up on the hard days. It costs believin...
05/18/2026

Five years is long enough to learn what a promise actually costs.

It costs showing up on the hard days. It costs believing in them when no one else does. It costs staying when the easier thing is leaving.

This spring marks our fifth birthday. And the next 33 days are going to tell you what those five years built.

You’ll meet the kids. You’ll hear them in their own words. You’ll see what it looks like when a promise gets kept long enough to matter.

$50,000 by World Refugee Day. That’s the goal. Stay with us, because the story’s just starting.

🎂 Link in bio.

Calling all friends and supporters of UPN! 📢 In just two weeks, we are inviting you to rise up and celebrate our birthda...
04/29/2026

Calling all friends and supporters of UPN! 📢 In just two weeks, we are inviting you to rise up and celebrate our birthday with us!! 🥳🎉🙌🏼

Join us for our 5th annual Rise UP! Breakfast🌞(aka the best morning in Nashville). This year is going to be extra special as we celebrate five years UPN, hear from our graduating seniors, award our first Dale Clay Memorial scholarship, and share about the impact we’ve seen over these past five years in our city and in the lives of hundreds of refugee and immigrant students and families.

Returning chef Juan Natal will be cooking for us yet again 🍳 🥓, and we’ll have the very best bagels 🥯 in town from and coffee ☕️ provided by . It’s a morning you don’t want to miss!! 🤩

We’d be honored for you to join us. Space is limited, so hurry and reserve your spot! Click through the link in our profile to find all the details and reserve your free ticket today!! 🎟️

Hey hey high school students!!!! 📢 We are looking to add more StreetLeaders to our team! 👀 ⁣⁣⁣⁣💭Imagine yourself getting...
02/25/2026

Hey hey high school students!!!! 📢 We are looking to add more StreetLeaders to our team! 👀 ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
💭Imagine yourself getting a job where you show up after school a couple days a week to make an impact with young kids (and get paid for it!!💰)

💭Now imagine as part of that job, you get all of this (and more!) –⁣⁣
⁣⁣
👉🏽Leadership training⁣⁣
👉🏽Academic support⁣⁣
👉🏽Adult mentorship⁣⁣
👉🏽Spiritual disceipleship ⁣⁣
👉🏽College counseling⁣⁣
👉🏽Fun outdoor adventures⁣⁣
👉🏽A loving and welcoming community
⁣⁣
Does that sound like an amazing job to you?? (cuz it does to us 🙋🏻‍♀️) If you are a high school student who’s family came to the US as refugees and think this sounds like something you would like to find out more about - DM us or fill out the StreetLeader application found in the link in our bio! ⁣⁣
⁣
Hiring for immediate and summer positions. 😎

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Nashville, TN
37201-37250

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