OUR HISTORY
OUR HISTORY
We began with a commitment to creating virtual-career-day videos to show teens achievable life goals.
A BELIEF IN THE POWER OF GOALS LED TO A BREAK-THROUGH
In 2011, Furahi Achebe began making brief videos of people talking about their careers. From her own observations she believed that if children were exposed to a range of realistic career options, they might find one that excited them and be motivated to work harder in school. She began a nonprofit organization and named it The Fitting Room: Helping Teens Find a Future That Fits.
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Achebe herself interviewed and filmed dozens of professionals, edited their stories to two minutes, and made the "virtual career-day" videos available to nearly 70 high school educators in Connecticut. Early evidence showed that the videos improved attitudes.
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In 2013, she enlisted the YouthWorks program in Bridgeport to provide summer interns whom she could train to help her create additional videos. She discovered that these young people needed weeks of careful handling before they were ready to trust her and apply themselves to what she was teaching, typically only as the program was ending.
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Achebe and a youth counselor, Brenda Tyson, began to add a therepeutic component to the program, directly addressing the difficulties of the students' lives in deeply personal ways. The students' feedback at the end of the summer programs told us overwhelmingly that they themselves felt this counseling was the most valuable part of what they had learned.
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By 2018, Achebe and the board of directors decided to shift the resources of the organization to the development of a curriculum that could underpin the future success of disadvantaged urban teens. On our 10-year anniversary we changed our name to Determine Your Destiny, synonymous with our curriculum.
THE FITTING ROOM
A PLACE FOR TEENS
AND YOUNG ADULTS
"TO FIND A FUTURE THAT FITS"
Virtual Career-Day Videos Designed with Relevancy to Urban Teens
Unlike career videos available elsewhere, our videos feature one or more African Americans or other people of color as the interviewer or interviewee, helping our audience to imagine themselves in those careers.
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More than 100 of our videos are available on YouTube.