ARYSE

Last Thursday evening was our inaugural annual fundraiser, ARYSE and Shine - Celebrating Our Stories, and we are still on cloud nine and in awe of the support, generosity, and joy we felt throughout the night!🧡

We are elated to share that our inaugural event raised over $52,000 to support our students and programs! Whether you were there to celebrate with us in person, donated to our campaign, or have been a champion of our work and our students, we appreciate you and thank you for being part of our community.

Thank you so much to the Mattress Factory Museum for hosting us in your space and to Sol Patch Garden ~ Collette for donating the florals at the event. Throughout this week we will highlight all of the vendors and partners that made this inaugural event such a success.

We can’t wait to experience these vibes with you TOMORROW evening at ARYSE and Shine - Celebrating Our Stories!🧡🪩

Make sure to get your ticket before they sell out - we have less than 30 left. Thank you to everyone who has already purchased a ticket or donated to our campaign. This event is not just about us, it’s about you, too. It’s to celebrate all the individuals who have made ARYSE what it is: our students, their families, staff, board of directors, volunteers, community members, and funders. We appreciate you all. See you tomorrow!✨

*If you are attending the event and want to participate in raffles, make sure you bring cash or checks due to PA state law.*

PRYSE Academy week 3✅ Swipe through this post to see what our students and staff did during the third week of our summer program.

This week, our students introduced us to Pitt’s Bike Cave, and for the last 2 weeks of the program students will take turns building a bike from scratch to be displayed at our Final Showcase! More details about our Final Showcase will be shared next week.

See you next week!🥰

It’s the second week of PRYSE Academy 2026 and we are honored to highlight our cultural cosmetology workshop led by Ayana Toukam, or Miss Yaya.🥰

In this workshop, our students learn about and deepen self-love through hair care, affirmations, and sound. Each day starts with reciting the affirmations they create as a group on the first day and the tone for the session is set through music and scents from an oil diffuser. This is the first time we have hosted a workshop that explicitly teaches our students about confidence and self-care, and we are so grateful to Ayana for leading this workshop with her confidence and teaching our students skills they will have forever.

Thank you to Christopher Sprowls for capturing several of the photos included in this post📸

Each year at PRYSE Academy, we are grateful to have creative partners facilitate workshops during the afternoon for our students. To thank our partners for their time and creativity, each week we will highlight them and their work! This week, we are excited to share our puppet making workshop led by Melannie Taylor, a teaching artist from the City Theatre Company 🎭

City Theatre has been a long-time partner at PRYSE and this is the first year their facilitation has not been in traditional acting or storytelling. In this puppet making workshop, students will work together to build puppets and learn about character development, structure, and storytelling through puppetry. Our youngest students in the pink class were the first to experience this workshop and they loved creating their characters and building their puppets!

We can’t wait to see what the rest of our students create with Melannie and are so appreciative to them for leading this workshop!🤗