Welcome to the uCANRise website!

Whether you're a high school or college student, a post-secondary success direct-service provider, a community advocate, or anyone else interested in the power of student movements to achieve educational equity, we're glad you found us.

uCANRise is a celebration of underrepresented students rising up in their schools and their communities to address systemic inequities and institutionalized oppression while at the same time learning advocacy, communication, and civic engagement skills to equip them for success in their careers and prepare them for leadership in their communities.

When the two of us met in 2017, we discovered we shared a passion for championing underrepresented students as well as operationalizing wonky sociology theory. The result was a year-long community of practice bringing three nonprofit organizations focused on student success – Southern California College Access Network (SoCal CAN), Students Rising Above (SRA), and uAspire – together to think about how they might move the field forward through their bold ideas and efforts.

That community of practice became the uCANrise collaborative, and their focus became thinking about how student access and success direct-service organizations could best support student-led movement building for a fair, accessible, and supportive post-secondary educational system. You can see the culmination of their thinking in the first phase in the year-end report, available for download here.

In the report, you'll have access to the theory of change they developed, along with the 20promising practices they devised to test in the second phase of the project. These practices are beneficial student interventions and supports that serve students as individuals, advocates, and community members.

Now in the second phase of this work, the three organizations are busy implementing those ideas, analyzing the results, and determining the strength and merit of those 20 promising practices and the theory of change overall.

In the spring, you can check back here for an update from each organization regarding the promising practices for supporting student movement building they have experimented with (sign-up for updates and we'll let you know as soon as those case studies are posted). In the meantime, our hope is to keep you regularly inspired with examples of students successfully organizing to change their campuses and communities for the better.

We look forward to keeping in touch with you about the work of uCANRise and of the students who inspire us! We'd also love to hear from you, whether you are a student advocate, or someone who supports student advocacy, to learn more about your work and what you are achieving to build a better world.

Best,
April and Laurie