Youth Character Development

Renacer supports youth development through mental wellness, character formation, economic mobility, summer employment and workforce training, civic education, and pathways into biomedical, behavioral health, allied health, and civil service careers across our service area.

Our youth programs cover all program costs and logistical support, pairing character building with hands-on exposure to real career pathways in STEM, hospitality, entrepreneurship, sustainability, the arts, and civil service.

We operate Desarrollo Juvenil as our youth program, serving high-school-aged youth from Orange, Seminole, Lake, and Osceola counties along the Orlando urban corridor and out to the rural boundary, including the agricultural communities at the edge of our service area where linguistic isolation and other upstream drivers shape young people's chances at health and economic mobility. We help young people build their personal goals, connect to careers, and grow into leaders who give back to their communities.

With a deep concentration in East Orlando communities (32807, 32817, 32822, 32825, 32826), we pair character-building with hands-on exposure to real career pathways in STEM, hospitality, entrepreneurship, sustainability, the arts, and civil service, all aligned with the Orlando tourism economy and regional workforce demand. We cover all program costs and logistical support.
Our youth programs include STEM (after-school and weekend workshops, see Section 6a), the Summer Youth Program (see Section 6b), and Children's Arts (see Section 6c).
This work has been supported by the Hispanic Access Foundation (HAF), which has supported our STEM project under the NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) framework.
Additional workforce and educational organizations behind this work include CareerSource Central Florida (CSCF), the regional workforce board for Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Sumter counties, which provides funding for youth-specific employment opportunities that sit alongside our adult workforce development work for Florida's displaced workers (see the PUENTES section for the full picture of our three CSCF-funded workforce efforts).

STEM PROGRAM
Renacer opens pathways for pre-college students into biomedical, behavioral health, and allied health careers through workshops, mentorship, and real-world institutional access.

Our mobile STEM lab serves East Orlando and agricultural communities at the corridor's edge year-round, paired with healthcare institutions that provide guest speakers and field trip hosts.

We operate STEM as an after-school and weekend program under the Desarrollo Juvenil initiative. Our workshops include robotics, coding, and hands-on science. We are operating a mobile STEM lab year-round beginning June 2026 along the Orlando urban corridor and into rural East Orange County, serving youth across the East Orlando communities (32807, 32817, 32822, 32825, 32826) and into the agricultural communities at the corridor's edge.

The STEM project is structured around the Pathways to Science model, which features health science researchers and near-peer mentoring for high school students. The project targets pre-college students pursuing biomedical and behavioral science careers, with the explicit goal of opening pathways into allied health and research careers.

Our healthcare institution relationships supply guest speakers and field trip hosts, giving youth direct access to career role models in medicine, nursing, public health, and community health. STEM serves as the foundation block of the Summer Youth Program, with hospitality, entrepreneurship, and sustainability as other tracks. As of 2026, we integrate music education and cultural arts into the STEM project through the Senderos a la Ciencia framework.

This project has been made possible through the Hispanic Access Foundation (HAF), whose broader Pathways to Science model directly names us as a partner conducting public outreach to communities in Orlando, and which funds our STEM project through its Senderos a la Ciencia program. Our joint programming with HAF includes the in-person STEM and Health Talk "The Air We Breathe: Why Public Health is so Important," co-hosted with HAF on July 17, 2025, in Orlando, featuring Dr. Michael Lauzardo on lung health and public health.

Joining us in this work is The Nucleus Orchestral Program, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that delivers high-quality music education to children and youth through orchestras and choirs, modeled on the Venezuelan El Sistema methodology, with operations in Orlando, Florida and Houston, Texas, and a particular focus on low-income families, with whom we work through the Senderos a la Ciencia framework.

Our government partners include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) provides the funding framework under which HAF supports our STEM project.

Summer Youth Program
Renacer delivers summer employment and workforce training for youth, aligned to the Orlando tourism economy and regional workforce demand, with a dedicated nonpartisan citizenship and civics education track focused on service, civic pride, and public service participation.

Our program combines STEM as a foundation block with hospitality, entrepreneurship, and sustainability tracks, and a dedicated nonpartisan citizenship and civics education subcomponent focused on careers in civil service.

We operate the Summer Youth Program as a project under the Desarrollo Juvenil initiative. This is one of three CSCF-funded workforce efforts we hold, alongside our adult workforce development work for Florida's displaced workers and the PUENTES CHW training contract (see PUENTES section above).

Our Summer Workforce Development Academy serves high school youth through classroom instruction, service learning, and career exploration linked to the Orlando tourism economy and regional workforce needs. The Academy offers career pathways in STEM as the foundation block, with hospitality, entrepreneurship, and sustainability as additional tracks, and a dedicated nonpartisan citizenship and civics education subcomponent focused on service, civic pride, participation in public life, and the promotion of careers in civil service.

We cover all program costs and logistical support. Our work with CareerSource Central Florida supports their initiative to connect high school students across Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Sumter counties to summer employment, workforce training, and career exploration.

We have grown the project steadily across counties and content over four years:

• 2023: camps held across Orange, Seminole, and Lake counties.

• 2024: project held in Orange County, in Azalea Park (32807), including a Summer Orchestra Camp.

• 2025: project held in Orange County, in Azalea Park (32807).

• 2026: launching the new Summer Youth Renacer Initiative in the East Orlando University area (32817), serving youth in the University-area community.

Partners on this work include:

• Sachamama, which contributed to the ecology curriculum for children in our 2023 camps.

• YOU - El Sistema Orlando (Youth Orchestra United - El Sistema Orlando), the Orlando-based youth orchestra organization in the El Sistema USA network, which supported our 2024 Summer Orchestra Camp.

• Gulf Coast Latin Chamber of Commerce, which provided support for summer youth programming in our 2023 camps.

Our government partner on this work is CareerSource Central Florida (CSCF), the regional workforce board for Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole, and Sumter counties, with whom we hold a formal partnership that funds the Summer Youth Program.

Children's Arts (project)
Renacer introduces young children to cultural events and artistic expression that connect families across the communities we serve.
Our programming introduces young children to Colombian cultural traditions, inspired by major heritage events, building cultural connections across families along the Orlando urban corridor.
We operate Children's Arts as our children's arts project under the Desarrollo Juvenil initiative. The project introduces young children to cultural events and artistic expression that bring families together, with an emphasis on Colombian cultural traditions that connect many families along the Orlando urban corridor. In 2024, we promoted children's arts programming inspired by the Carnaval de Barranquilla, recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, with a tradition that includes a dedicated Carnaval de los Niños (Children's Carnival) celebrating dance, music, and folk expression. The 2024 cultural programming reached our youth audience in Central Florida.

Casa Colombia has supported our children's arts programming, and Carnaval de Barranquilla provided the cultural programming framework for our 2024 children's arts work.

Our government partners include the Colombian Consulate, which provided support for our children's arts programming in 2024.