What inspired you to create Looped? What problem did you want to solve for teens? Can you share with us an experience that sparked your interest or urged you to take action?
I am an immigrant to Canada and a first-generation student - so when it came time for me to graduate high school and apply to university, I had no idea where to begin. I had above average grades but due to working every day after-school, I did not have the time to reach my fullest potential with academia, or the extracurricular experience to be eligible for scholarships. Since my parents were not educated in this country, they weren’t able to help me navigate the system. As much as they wanted to help.
Luckily, I was admitted into my first-choice program in University. I got lucky enough to have that little bit of access, which came through an older friend, a mentor of sorts.
A lot of students don’t have that. A lot of students don’t have the privilege of even realizing their potential in the first place. This led me to create LoopEducation. I wanted to create a sustainable way to offer affordable academic and career consulting to high school students. In the process, we ended up creating a win-win situation as we leverage the lived experience of real post-secondary students, providing them with jobs and an opportunity to give back to their community.
You are passionate about helping teens and young adults. What is your mission and how do you embody this at Looped, in your day to day work with teens, and with your team?
At LoopEducation, we use the community-as-expert model, where we employ post-secondary students as strategists, who are able to leverage their lived experience by giving back to the community and acquiring meaningful work experience. Our expert strategists offer crucial academic consulting services to students at an affordable rate.
We are aligned with UN's Sustainable Development Goal #4 of Quality Education. It motivates our mission and impact measurement strategy. We aim to create meaningful and equitable social change in the educational sector by making a positive difference in student lives.
Our goal is to promote equitable access to quality education. Specifically, by encouraging higher education to those lacking the resources and employing post-secondary students as strategists.
We do this every day by making sure we are as accessible as possible (in price, platform, language, etc.), having leading expertise of real post-secondary students who were very recently in the shoes of the high school students they help, and by being community-oriented.
How do you envision Looped in the next year and how do you think it could adapt to the way education is changing? How can you continue to provide the support teens need?
We envision LoopEd to be growing next year in different cities across Canada, having strategists from every post-secondary institution and helping students everywhere actualize their potentials while reaching the goals we have outlined in our impact measurement strategy.
Since we set out to be a virtual platform for accessibility and environmental reasons from the get-go, adapting to the new climate due to COVID has been relatively easy. Instead of doing outreach and advocacy in real classrooms - we are able to reach and meet students online!
For more information check out:
Coach Yanna
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