Assistant Coordinator, IMC Weekend School

The IMC Weekend School provides supplementary education for youth in impoverished neighborhoods. Tamara’s Meridian Social Innovation Fellowship Project supported the growth of the Future for Life network, a virtual community which provides ongoing professional development (job-readiness and networking) for alumni of IMC Weekend School Programs. Tamar further explains Future for Life here.

Project Summary

Future for Life (FFL) is a network for alumni of the IMC Weekend School, a supplementary education program for adolescents from underprivileged neighborhoods in the Netherlands’s larger cities. FFL deepens the Weekend School’s commitment to widening its students’ perspectives, building their self-confidence, and strengthening their sense of connectedness to Dutch society. The creation of an online Future for Life platform will establish a space for the creation of new connections and the sharing of knowledge throughout the lives of its members. By remaining connected through the FFL online community, alumni will benefit from constantly-evolving networking opportunities with an ever-increasing, vibrant population. Each member will be able to build a profile, register for events, communicate with other alumni, network with professionals, and enjoy exclusive and unlimited access to a broad range of career resources and internships.

Goals

A key success factor will be the focus on transferring responsibilities and ownership to alumni themselves to accelerate the network’s development. Such an approach encourages alumni to reciprocate while leveraging limited institutional resources.

Achievements

This fall, Tamara has successfully mobilized staff, directors and the board to endorse the concept of creating IMC’s own on-line platform and App as part of the Future for Life network. Tamara is reaching out to prospective funders including Microsoft, KPN, ING, and IBM for both financial and in-kind support. In addition, Tamara has designed the Ambassador Fellowship program for 10 distinguished IMC alumni. This program will provide training in skills such as sales, storytelling, and media relations. The program will launch at the end of January and feature high-level speakers and meetings with – among others – the team at the U.S. Embassy at The Hague. Tamara plans to leverage the Ambassador Fellows to help promote Future for Life.