Our Vision

View the full version of our Strategic Plan. Click Here!

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MIA’s Parameters for the next 10 years are to work only within the Metropolitan Denver Area (MDA) and, for the next five years, to focus predominantly on Denver Public Schools’ young people as the population for positive impact. 

However, as the cost of living in Denver continues to increase radically, more and more economically-challenged families will move to the cities, suburbs, and counties surrounding Denver proper. MIA will constantly monitor the migration of families and will adjust its MDA attention as needed. 

MIA considers working in complementary—not competitive—partnerships with like-minded leaders inside the schools and juvenile justice centers essential. MIA does not exist to change the education and youth legal system. Instead, it exists to positively impact the lives of young people and youth-serving adults within its sphere of focus. 

MIA’s specifically trained Trusted Adults (aka Program Managers, Program Coordinators, and Program Actors/Facilitators) will eventually be eligible full-time employees, if/when needed, for overtime compensation and benefits. This is in keeping with the highest requirements and ethical standards of employment and regulatory compliance. 

MIA’s Pursuit is to enable young people, ages 7-21 (predominantly), to REFLECT, RECLAIM and REHEARSE for REALITIES for their past, present, and future. MIA will positively impact school districts and juvenile justice centers within the greater Denver Metropolitan Area by expanding and deepening its work with young people in those schools and centers. 

MIA is committed to positively impacting young people by offering them safe, honest spaces where they can: 

● REFLECT upon what they feel, what they think, what they want, what they need, and who they believe they are, rather than who family, communities, cultures, society, and other circumstances have defined them. 

● RECLAIM for themselves the rights, opportunities, privileges, and possibilities denied them by others. 

● REHEARSE how they act and react towards: Themselves, Others, Life, Circumstances, and New possibilities. 

● REALITIES are: What is real, What is perceived to be real, What is reasonably real, What is potentially real, and What it will take to make new possibilities real. 

MIA’s Progress will be measured in 7 + 5 ways:

Subjective

1. Staying focused on the strategies, ideas, and commitments in this Plan;

2. Cultivating and engaging a loyal, committed, and energized base of supporting individuals, foundations, institutions, government agencies, and related leaders, businesses, and like-minded organizations to DISRUPT the school-to-prison pipeline throughout the Denver Metropolitan Area;

3. Securing an ever-growing funding stream needed to fulfill this Plan;

4. Perfecting the recruiting, equipping, and retaining of exceptional people as full-time staff who are wholeheartedly in sync with MIA and its Passion and Purpose;

5. Forging enduring, deepening, and expanding relationships with schools and juvenile justice centers for continual engagement with young people within their jurisdictions;

6. Experiencing thousands of young people’s lives impacted by MIA’s Pursuit of “Reflect, Reclaim and Rehearse for Realities” can also be documented, communicated, and utilized to create greater awareness, attention, and action in perpetually disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline; and

7. Building a strong, safe, secure and stable organization that is a magnet for others who want to be a part of something that powerfully and creatively alters the destinies of young people we serve and, through them, influence their peers, their families, their communities and the contribution of others throughout their own lives.

Objective

1. Cultivated institutional demand for services with corresponding venues and schedules.

2. Recruiting and retaining full-time staff to meet generated demand.

3. Funding to meet commitments while building a reasonable cash reserve.

4. Having former participants become full-time employees as Program Actor/Facilitators. This will assist MIA in becoming more diverse and connecting more thoroughly with those we serve in schools and juvenile justice centers.

5. Understanding the statistical impact MIA has on DISRUPT-ing the school-to-prison pipeline.