It’s Our Second Anniversary! (What we did, what we will do, and what you can do…)

By Suetmui Yu

December 28th, 2022

It’s December 28th, and you know what this means… it’s The TEA Proposal’s second birthday! “Hey Alexa, play the ‘Happy Birthday to You’ song”

As a tradition, let’s do a yearly recap–what did The TEA Proposal Team do in 2022?

Our first event of the year was the Law Student Shadowing Event, which took place on March 16th, 2022. For this event, we invited 20 local high school students to the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law to connect with law students and faculty. Head to our “Law School Shadowing Event Blog!” to learn more about what activities students engaged in during the shadowing and how The TEA Proposal helped put together the event! Of course, this event would not have been possible without the hard work put in by the Student Bar Association (SBA) at UArizona College of Law. Here, we would like to give a special thanks to Rachel R. (former president of UArizona SBA) who worked tirelessly with The TEA Proposal team to create this event and put in a great amount of time and effort to ensure that the event ran smoothly! Lastly, thank you to all the students that attended this event! We loved your enthusiasm toward the field of law and your active participation in the event activities! We hope you enjoyed your time at the College of Law and had the chance to learn something new!

The second event we held this year was the Gaining Healthcare Experience Zoom Seminar for High Schoolers on September 3rd, 2022. For this online event, we invited speakers who held volunteer, phlebotomist, EMT, or CNA positions in Arizona to present various medically-related opportunities. Through discussing their personal experiences and offering valuable tips, our speakers introduced high schoolers to different fields they can get involved in if they are interested in a healthcare career. Visit our Instagram post to learn more about our wonderful speakers! Of course, we would like to give a huge thank you to our presenters as well as the students who attended the seminar.

Finally, our third event for this year was the December 4th ‘Dive Into Engineering!’ Zoom Seminar that we held in collaboration with Dr. Kimberly Ogden–the Department Chair of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Arizona–to help expose and connect high school students to engineering studies and engineering opportunities at a higher level. At this event, students heard from Dr. Ogden and Dr. Suchol Savagatrup and learned about engineering, what engineers do, and what engineering research entails. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Ogden and Dr. Savagatrup for their time and effort in making this event possible! To the students who attended this event, thank you for your active participation in the webinar discussion and activities! We hope you enjoyed the event as much as we did in planning it!

So this was in just 2022, what does our team have planned for the future?

As an organization that’s committed to serving the community–particularly local high school students who come from underserved areas–we will continue our dedication to finding more resources and providing more connections for high schoolers in need. If you are a high school student that is currently in search of more extracurricular opportunities, you can either (1) complete our Student Interest Survey so that we can tailor our resources to your interests as we contact local professionals/organizations or (2) directly Contact Us and our team can work with you one-on-one to get you connected to an opportunity of your interest.

Other things you can do are follow us on social media or subscribe to TEA's Mailing List so that you can get notified when our new opportunities come out!

If you’re thinking… “This sounds amazing! How can I help?”

If you can be a provider of opportunities for local high school students or you know about something interesting that The TEA Proposal can get connected with, please let us know by filling out the form on the Contact Us page! We will be forever grateful :)

If you are a high school graduate that is committed to tackling social disparities and The TEA Proposal's mission aligns with your values and passion, you should apply to join our team’s board! Visit our “Join Us!” page to learn about the description and responsibilities of currently available positions.

If you would like to help us with our fundraiser, feel free to visit our GoFundMe Link. We are fundraising to reach our simple goal of $500 so that we can improve the resources and programs that we are providing to our high school students!

Lastly…

Thank you to ALL of our (past and present) collaborators for taking the time to work with us and creating all of these opportunities for the local high school students! And thank you to all of our supporters and students for giving us your trust and providing us a chance to make a positive impact on the community!