Grow and Tell?

Knowhow

Lifewise? Wiselife?

If you are looking for an acronym, start with the words you want associated, like "smarter living", "better living", "choices", "rational", "knowledge", "informed", etc... and piece it together.

How about What It Takes (WIT)? Very explanatory and the acronym is kind of cocky, kids might like it.

A pseudo-word with life in it sounds to me like a medicine, or the Lifetime channel, or something... just me.

Other thoughts... Stepping Up, Making It, Making It Happen... not good acroynyms though.

KnowPower

willpower gets you on track, KnowPower takes you forward...

c'mon, it's the cheesiest!

One shouldn't be critical without having something better to offer, but WIT brings to mind failured enterprises with similarly 'folksy' names.

(It's a tie: Lifewise vs Grow & Tell.)

Beg pardon, 'failed'

Just sayin', when white people from Michigan aim for simplistic inspiration and miss the target, it can be memorably humiliating.

And while I loves me some Eric, I think Vickie's got your winner. "Grow and Tell" might flatter and attract the kind of successful adults you want in this program, people who

[A] took school seriously and remember classroom events like 'show & tell' fondly, and

[B] do indeed feel that their achievements are a product of personal growth, and would like a chance to talk about it in front of an audience that needs to hear that opportunities await them.

Lifewise is good too, though. But it has some ethereal, new-agey overtones on a trauma-helicopter substrate.

Of course there are 10 others. Crid reads my junk e-mail to get so smart.

Personally, I detest (barf!) the term, "at-risk". It's politically correct, sure - but what you're doing doesn't just benefit them. It's good for everybody, but if it's labeled "for at-risk", it's automatically "thugs only" to a lot of people.

I don't have a replacement term. I don't think one is necessary.

RISE - Really Interesting Speakers in Education

Listen Up - With an arrowhead on 1 (I think the left-hand) tine of the "U". Slightly cryptic, the "Up" would describe the effect of the program.

With characteristic immodesty, I think the 2nd is good. I'll stop now.

Now I'm Gonna Get Educated Right? Oops, scratch that.

WIT by four lengths. Unlike WIN, it actually describes the direct causation between its prescription and end goal. And it makes for an easy intro to each seminer (What It Takes to be a Writer, President, or (God Help You) a Lawyer).

"Grow and Tell" is way too saccharine to appeal to the customer base.

SKILL
"Showing Kids Inspiring Life Lessons"

How's that?

The Power of Won: Role Models for At-Risk Kids

The acronym of course is POW

1. I think role models is more accurate than mentors, since these are speakers who won't be actively involved with the kids

2. PLEASE stop calling them inner-city kids. That's a geographic term and a euphemism and it's inaccurate in a huge number of cases.

I like WIT.

"Showing kids what it takes to make it (in life)"

That works with WIT.

Just plain "kids" is probably best, since it's hard to slap a label on the targeted children without being pejorative. "Inner-city kids" might be OK, but "at-risk kids" sounds like a polite way of saying "doomed to be crackheads".

Hmm. I found this about Nathan Fillion on IMDB:

"Fillion co-founded the non-profit organization Kids Need to Read with author PJ Haarsma in 2007 to help inspire kids' imagination by helping to get books into underfunded libraries. Fillion believes strongly in the importance of reading and believes every child deserves the chance to read good books.
Haarsma discovered while speaking at schools around the country that many libraries cannot afford to purchase new books and children would plead with him to get a copy of his book.
Fillion took the dedication of his fans (Browncoats, mostly - Rw) and put it to good use by directing their energies into something he believed was a worthwhile cause."

Heh. There were over three thousand Browncoats at Dragoncon, to see Nathan, Jewel Staite, Morena Baccarin and Alan Tudyk.

So, PJ Haarsma is doing the speaking bit, and has rounded up some help in other places. You have competition, a good thing!

> way too saccharine to appeal
> to the customer base.

Hey! Hey now! It's less saccharine than Lifewise, which sounds all mystical and harshed by the brutal lessons of a grim world that doesn't care. Grow & Tell sells the product to adults, who are going to be [A] paying for it (or at least signing off on it) and [B] called upon to participate. The pun speaks directly to the nature of the classroom presentation, whereas WIT suggests a humor that has no central role in the enterprise. Even when the acronym is exploded, What It Takes has threatening implications about how the world is waiting impatiently to measure young children, whereas G&T reminds them that they'll soon have resources not yet in their possession. SKILL is too cloying and promises too much, POW is too violent.

Don't worry about the logo, Amy, we'll find you a Photoshop guy... There'll be a sturdy sapling stretching confidently towards blue heavens as nourishing, enobling beams of sunshine fall through its eager limbs, delighting an exaltation of larks, which sings gaily about the joyous seasons to come.

I don't care; I'm cashing Vickie's check.