Rising Together Foundation

Bridging the Gap for Education and Opportunity

Our Mission

Rising Together Foundation creates, administers, and supports programs for under-served Memphis-area students delivering academic enrichment, leadership development, and physical fitness. Rising Together introduces all participants to college-preparatory and life-skills experiences. With support from personal relationships, civic exposure, and financial assistance, youth become equipped for a lifetime of leadership and service. 

Our Strategy

Rising Together invests our resources into programming that helps disadvantaged students.  We partner with schools, churches, and other community organizations that are committed to serving disadvantaged students and have great facilities that are often under-used in the summer months. We pay for everything related to our programs and our partners provide the facilities. 

For many youths in our community a good education is a way out of poverty, yet they don’t receive the opportunities to improve their academic and leadership skills in the summer months. Rather than develop skills, they often regress academically, the “summer slide”. Our organization was founded to address these inequities in education and opportunity through our academic programs and summer camps.

Our Programs

Rising Together promotes high academic, leadership, and character standards and broadens peer relationships among students throughout the greater community. Designed to foster academic preparedness for a group of emerging academic and social leaders, the programs and events develop and connect future leaders of our community. Our programs and events are a collaborative effort by individuals representing universities and colleges, public and independent schools, and other organizations dedicated to excellence in education and leadership.

SLAM Summer Academy

Our signature program, SLAM (Scholars, Leaders, and Athletes in Memphis) Summer Academy, is a full-day, multi-week program that focuses on academic enrichment in math, language arts, and writing. The program also includes courses in leadership development, public speaking, financial literacy, STEM, as well as physical fitness, sports, and games.