ARYSE

Alliance for Refugee Youth Support and Education assists resettled refugee youth in becoming confident, engaged, & productive members of American society.

ARYSE supports immigrant and refugee youth to become prepared, engaged, and confident members of the Greater Pittsburgh community. The signature program of ARYSE is Pittsburgh Refugee Youth Summer Enrichment (PRYSE) Academy, a three-week summer program led by high school and college students for refugee and immigrant youth that combines academic classes, creative expression workshops, and civic engagement.

06/04/2026

We hosted our end of year celebration on Saturday!💛This celebration brings together students from each of our school year programs to celebrate the end of the school year and celebrate the beginning of the PRYSE Academy season.

Like last year’s celebration, the afternoon started with a brief presentation from YSC members, Reol and Faustin, who shared about our Youth Steering Committee to recruit new members for our 2026-2027 YSC. Thank you, Reol and Faustin, for sharing this opportunity with our students and for being great examples of what it means to be a youth leader!

After the presentations, an afternoon of fun began! Students played basketball, futsal, badminton, volleyball, and competed in an intense game of Uno and made bracelets. Some of our students also participated in an ARYSE first: a rock climbing wall! Thank you to our partners at the University of Pittsburgh for being such gracious hosts - our students had an amazing time and are already asking when they can climb the rock walls again!

Thank you to all our students, staff, and partners for the amazing school year! We look forward to more moments like this over the summer at PRYSE Academy!☀️

06/03/2026

Our final Youth Steering Committee (YSC) meeting of the year took place on Saturday, May 23rd and our students spent the afternoon in the Northside at the Children’s Museum with and City of Asylum!🎙️

Our YSC members started the day by building on their public speaking skills through podcasting. Grace and Alexa from SLB Radio shared about their work and the importance of audio tools for public speaking, and our youth leaders had the opportunity to interview each other on their blog entries. If you have not checked out our YSC members blog on leadership, read it on our website!

The second half of the meeting took place at City of Asylum where students enjoyed lunch and our members who are graduating high school were honored for their community service and leadership in ARYSE as members of our YSC.

We are so proud of all our YSC members for their leadership, growth, and commitment to ARYSE. We can’t wait to see what they all accomplish, both inside and outside of our Youth Steering Committee and ARYSE.🥰 And a HUGE shoutout to Meg and Chance for guiding our youth leaders throughout the last year, and to ARYSE alum and former YSC member, Nargis for volunteering with the program. We appreciate all of you!💛

06/02/2026

Last Thursday was the final session of our After School Club for the 2025-2026 school year, and Mike planned and facilitated an afternoon filled with food, laughs, and reflection!🤩

Students met at the ARYSE office and enjoyed a meal from Chick n’ Bubbly and a sweet treat of cupcakes. Following their meal, they walked over to Point State Park.

We want to give a BIG thank you to our faculty partner at Duquesne University, Dr. Jennie Schulze, for supporting our students and the program since the beginning—all the way back in 2018. We also want to thank all of our volunteers who worked alongside our students as they completed assignments and explored post-secondary options. We appreciate your time, energy, and commitment to our work and students.

Last but not least, we want to give a special shoutout to Mike! This was Mike’s 7th school year managing our After School Club and we appreciate all that Mike does to support our students and their families. 💛

If you were in the After School Club, tell us in the comments your favorite memory from this year!

05/29/2026

This month marked the end of our school year programs and we are so excited to highlight the final session of each program starting with our Girls Art and Maker Group!🥰

For the past 3 years, our Girls Group students have created collaborative projects and this year they created two: a quilt and mosaic. During this final session they finished these projects which will be displayed in the ARYSE office! In addition to the projects, we were honored to invite one of our Board of Directors, Karen Lue, to take portraits of each student. Thank you for attending and capturing each students’ personality, Karen!

A special thank you to all the students and volunteers who showed up each month in community with one another. Your creativity, energy, and time are always so appreciated. We also want to give a big shoutout to Erica for always ensuring the program is planned and facilitated with our student’s ideas and hopes at the forefront. We appreciate you, Erica!

Here’s to another silly and sweet year of our Girls Art and Maker Group!🩷 Let us know in the comments your favorite memory from Girls Group this year

05/28/2026

Last week was the third and final event in our Post-Secondary Support Program’s financial empowerment series. Inspired by the positive feedback from our first ever financial empowerment event last year, we hosted this 3-event series to talk about all things financial: personal agency, managing of funds, credit, scholarships and loans, culture, and much more!🤗

Following these events, 75% of students felt more comfortable talking about money, and 100% said the information shared was something they’d talk to their families about. We are so appreciative to our students for trusting us in supporting them with their post-high school journey, and for always sharing how we can improve our events and programs to best support them.

Thank you to our funding partners who have made the Post-Secondary Program possible: Posner Foundation, Duquesne Light, and the Elsie Hillman Foundation. And thank you to partners who attended these events and shared your knowledge, resources, and time with our students: Equitable Advisors, Pittsburgh Promise, PHEAA, POISE Foundation, Pittsburgh Tomorrow, and Dollar Bank.

05/22/2026

Our 2025 annual report is finished and on our website!🥳 Swipe through this post to see a summary of what the 2024-2025 year looked like for each ARYSE program.

Thank you to .co for designing our report for the 7th year in a row - this is our favorite report yet and we appreciate your time and energy in every project you do with us!💛 Click the link in our bio to read the whole report.

05/14/2026

Last week, Dakota hosted a dinner with 6 of our alumni who completed their first year of college!🥳The alum, Dakota, and Fernán enjoyed a meal from Chinatown Inn and reflected on their first year of college, lessons learned, and resources they used or would like to try during their second year of college.

The institutions that the students’ completed their first year at include Carlow University, CCAC, Penn West - Clarion, and LaRoche University. While this dinner marks the celebration of one year of college completed, it also marks a programmatic milestone as this past year was the first full-year of dedicated support to ARYSE high school seniors and alumni through our Post-Secondary Support Program. We are so grateful to Dakota for all the time and energy she puts into the intentional planning, facilitating, and supporting of our students and their families.💛

We are so proud of these 6 alums for all their hard work and dedication during their first year of college and look forward to all that they will accomplish during their second year!✨

05/12/2026

In their April programming sessions, our Youth Steering Committee (YSC) members reflected on leadership and talked about two important leadership skills: asking questions and public speaking. With these new skills, they generated questions about leadership and 9 of our members are sharing their responses with you in our latest blog, “Our Youth Leadership Committee’s Thoughts on Leadership”.📝

We are so proud of all of our YSC members who contributed to this blog and are grateful they trust us with sharing their words. To read the blog, check your inbox or find it on our website.📩

05/07/2026

At the beginning of the year, our team was very excited to welcome Amya back to the team!😍 As our now full-time PRYSE Academy Operations Coordinator, Amya works alongside Parag to plan PRYSE Academy and manages all operations aspects like student enrollment, program supplies, and seasonal staff coordination.

Just last weekend, Amya graduated with her Masters in International Development from the University of Pittsburgh’s Public and International Affairs department. We are so proud of you, Amya, and are so lucky to have you as a member of our team!💛

05/06/2026

Last week, we shared some photos and information to our story about Meg and Youth Steering Committee member, Aalia, trip to Harrisburg for Welcoming Schools Advocacy Day! To learn more about what Aalia, Meg, and the rest of our students and team accomplished in April, read our April newsletter!📨

While in Harrisburg, Meg and Aalia attended legislative meetings and raised awareness about “welcoming schools” legislation which would require Pennsylvania schools to adopt policies that protect immigrant students. We are so proud of you, Aalia, for sharing your experiences and uplifting immigrant youth in Pennsylvania. A quote from Aalia’s speech was in an article by - the article is linked in our bio.

If you are interested in learning more about our advocacy work or welcoming schools legislation, send us a DM. If you are not subscribed to our newsletters, click the link in our bio to subscribe.

📸:

Address

710 Fifth Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA
15219

Website

https://linktr.ee/ArysePgh

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