Invest in Your Strengths Radio Show Wins Metcalf Award for Diversity in the Media
PROVIDENCE, RI – April 26, 2017 – Academy for Career Exploration Focuses on
Strengths in Award Winning Radio Program
The Academy for Career Exploration’s determination to advance innovation in
education, enhance student opportunities, and improve parent and community
engagement, has once again brought recognition to this pioneering
Providence Public Charter High School. *“Invest in Your Strengths,”*
written and produced by Vanessa Toledo-Vickers of the Academy for Career
Exploration and *Latino Public Radio*, will be honored by Rhode Island for
Community & Justice on May 17th with the Metcalf Award for Diversity in the
Media (Community category). “Invest in Your Strengths” was launched as a
10-part, bilingual radio and podcast series focused on how ACE, a
Providence public charter high school, is re-thinking its educational
approach to prepare youth for the 21st century workplace.
Working in partnership with business and community leaders such as Tim
Hebert, Chief Client Officer of Carousel Industries and Leadership Rhode
Island, the Academy for Career Exploration <http://aceprovidence.org/> (ACE)
is committed to becoming the state’s first strengths-based high school.
“Our goal is to help students, faculty and staff discover their innate
talents and then develop them into strengths,” said Dr. Mario F. Cirillo,
Head of School. “At ACE we are teaching students both core academics and
marketable workplace skills. Our strengths-based approach is inviting them
to think about how their strengths and interests can make a difference in
industry and in service to their community. We’ve made a commitment to make
dramatic changes in our approach to education in order to provide equal
access and opportunity for some of Rhode Island’s most underprivileged
students.”
“We were impressed by the comprehensiveness of this project: by the
partnership between a school and radio station; the bilingual interviews
and materials; the nature of an educational effort that seeks to build a
conversation within the school and outside in the larger community about
the strengths and talents youth possess rather than their deficits,”
stated Toby
Ayers, PhD, Executive Director, Rhode Island for Community & Justice.
“Toledo Vickers does an exemplary job of showing how ACE is helping
students discover their passions and talents so they can develop career
paths that incorporate these.”
Calling on past success in the radio genre, Toledo-Vickers conceived of the
Radio Show as a way to connect with parents to inform and engage them.
Recognizing the challenges that low income families face when it comes to
connecting with teachers and school activities because of work and
transportation constraints, the radio format allows ACE to meet parents
where they are. Show topics have focused on expanding career opportunities
in technology, the intersection between education and health, and what it
means to know and develop one’s strengths, and more. With “Invest in Your
Strengths” Toledo-Vickers has effectively captured the attention of the
Latino Public Radio listening audience while generating dialogue with
industry, civic, and community leaders about these important topics and the
many challenges affecting ACE students and their families.
In addition to being the Director of Development at the Academy for Career
Exploration, Ms. Toledo-Vickers sits on the board of CommerceRI and is a
Leadership RI graduate (LRI ’01), which makes her and the Academy for
Career Exploration important contributors to the LRI led initiative to make
Rhode Island the first Strengths-based state and ultimately help Make RI
Stronger.
The Academy for Career Exploration (ACE) is a public charter high school
that offers an academic program with a focus on career pathways in
technology. For more information about ACE, “Invest in Your Strengths,” or
the Gallup StrengthsFinder, visit www.aceprovidence.org or
www.strengthsri.org.