Students bent over the specimen benches
Programs

Ten ways to find out what you are good at.

Every program is free, taught by people who do the work for a living, and built around one question: what will you actually be able to do at the end of the day that you could not do at the start?

Register your childFund a program
Straight with you

Three are running. One is established and returning. Six are not built yet.

We could list all ten and let you assume they all exist. Instead each one below says exactly where it stands. One is marked established — relaunching free: it is a proven program with completed cycles behind it, returning as a free Foundation offering with its curriculum and coaching already in place. The ones marked designed, not yet funded have a curriculum and a professional ready to teach them — what they are missing is materials, a venue and a first cohort. If one of them is the reason you are here, register anyway: you go on the list and you are the reason it gets built.

A clinician guiding a student through the first cut
Medicine & Mastery

Youth Med-Surg Discovery

Running now

Four hours inside a real clinical environment, doing what the people who work there do.

What you will learn

  • How a heart and a set of lungs actually work — by holding them, not by seeing a diagram
  • How to tie a surgical knot and place a suture that holds
  • How a sterile field is set up, and why breaking it matters
  • Hands-only CPR, properly, to the point where you could use it
  • What tissue looks like under a microscope and how to read it
  • How a disease actually develops and progresses — anatomy and physiology tied to real clinical cases
  • What a PA, an anesthesiologist and a surgeon each actually do all day — from them, not from a website

What you leave with

You will have sutured, held a human heart, and worked a mock operating room — and you will know, honestly, whether medicine is for you.

Ages7th grade and up LengthOne day · 4 hours CostFree Taught byPracticing physician assistants, nurse practitioners, surgeons and anesthesiologists Register
An artist working with students at easels in the gallery
Arts & Expression

Intro to Art Discovery

Running now

A painting intensive inside a working commercial gallery, taught by artists who sell their work.

What you will learn

  • How to start when the canvas is blank — the part nobody teaches
  • Mixing color: why the green you want is never the green in the tube
  • Composition — where to put the thing, and why it matters
  • Brush and palette-knife technique on real canvas with real acrylics
  • How a working artist decides a piece is finished
  • How a gallery hangs a show, from the people who hang it

What you leave with

A finished painting of your own, hung on the wall of a commercial San Diego gallery, seen by an audience the same afternoon.

AgesAges 7 and up LengthOne day · 3 hours CostFree Taught byExhibiting artists Walter Redondo and Megan Bishop Register
An instructor setting the camera while a student operates
Arts & Expression

Filmmaking Discovery

Running now

Write it, shoot it, cut it, screen it. Six weeks from blank page to a finished film screened in front of an audience. A proven program with four years of completed cycles behind it, now offered free by the Foundation — curriculum, crew and professional camera, lighting, sound and editing equipment, all available to the program at no charge.

What you will learn

  • How a story becomes a script that a crew can actually shoot
  • Shot composition — why the camera goes there and not two feet left
  • Operating a camera, setting exposure, pulling focus
  • Directing an actor without telling them how to say the line
  • Editing: how meaning is made in the cut, not the shot
  • Sound, which is half of film and the half beginners forget
  • What happens after picture lock — how a finished film reaches an audience

What you leave with

A short film you wrote, shot and edited yourself, screened to a room of people who did not make it.

AgesAges 12 and up LengthSix weeks · weekly CostFree Taught byOur founder, an award-winning independent filmmaker, with working crew Register
Arts & Expression

Music Production Discovery

Designed, not yet funded

How a record is actually built, from people who have built records you have heard.

What you will learn

  • What a DAW is and how a session is laid out — on the tools professionals actually use: Ableton Live, Logic Pro and FL Studio
  • Recording: microphone choice, placement, and why the room matters more than the mic
  • Arrangement — how a loop becomes a song with somewhere to go
  • Mixing: levels, EQ, compression, and knowing when to stop
  • How a professional session actually runs, and how to behave in one

What you leave with

A finished, mixed track you produced, that you can play to anyone.

AgesAges 12 and up LengthSix weeks · weekly CostFree Taught byConfirmed industry partners Craig Bauer and Anthony J. Resta Tell me when this opens
Pathways & Purpose

Culinary Arts Discovery

Designed, not yet funded

Cooking as a craft and a career, not a chore.

What you will learn

  • Knife skills — the single thing that separates confident cooks from nervous ones
  • Heat control, and why most home cooking fails on it
  • How flavor is built in layers rather than added at the end
  • Food safety to a professional standard
  • How to read a recipe, then how to leave it
  • What a professional kitchen line is really like

What you leave with

A full dish cooked start to finish by you — and the ability to feed yourself and other people well.

AgesAges 10 and up LengthOne day, then six weeks CostFree Taught byWorking chefs and culinary school partners Tell me when this opens
Pathways & Purpose

Money Sense & Entrepreneurship

Designed, not yet funded

The financial education that is missing from almost every school curriculum.

What you will learn

  • Where money actually goes: income, tax, and why your first payslip is smaller than you expected
  • Credit and interest — how they build you up and how they trap you
  • Saving and compounding, shown with real numbers over real timeframes
  • How to price something you made so it is worth making
  • What it actually costs to start a business
  • How to pitch — and how to hear no without stopping

What you leave with

Your own business idea, costed out and pitched to a room of adults who will tell you the truth about it.

AgesAges 12 and up LengthSix weeks · weekly CostFree Taught byLocal business owners, accountants and founders Tell me when this opens
Pathways & Purpose

School & Studies

Designed, not yet funded

How to learn, which is a skill nobody is taught and everybody is graded on.

What you will learn

  • How to study, as opposed to re-reading — and why re-reading does not work
  • A note system you will actually keep using
  • Managing a deadline that is three weeks away
  • What colleges genuinely look at in an application
  • How financial aid works, in plain language, before it matters
  • How to ask for help without feeling stupid

What you leave with

A study system that fits how your brain works, and a realistic plan for your next two years.

AgesAges 11 and up LengthOngoing · weekly CostFree Taught byTeachers, tutors and current college students Tell me when this opens
Pathways & Purpose

Intro to Debating

Designed, not yet funded

Learning to think out loud, under pressure, in front of people.

What you will learn

  • How to build an argument that holds when someone pushes on it
  • How to listen to an argument and find the weak joint
  • Speaking without notes, and what to do when your mind goes blank
  • Researching a position you disagree with, honestly
  • Staying composed when someone is dismantling you in public

What you leave with

You will have argued a real case in front of a room, and won or lost it on the merits — which is a thing most adults have never done.

AgesAges 11 and up LengthSix weeks · weekly CostFree Taught byAttorneys, teachers and competitive debaters Tell me when this opens
Young athletes working through hex hurdles on the turf
Medicine & Mastery

Speed, Agility & Conditioning

Established · relaunching free

Athletic development done properly — for any sport, at an age when movement quality decides everything that follows.

What you will learn

  • Sprint mechanics — how to actually run faster, not just try harder
  • Acceleration, deceleration and changing direction without getting hurt
  • Plyometrics and circuit work scaled to a growing body
  • Strength training with technique taught first and load second
  • Why warm-up, recovery and sleep are training, not preamble
  • Reading your own body — the difference between sore and injured
  • The mental side: pushing a limit, and facing your own worst critic

What you leave with

Measurably faster and stronger — baseline tested at the start, retested at the end, with a written progress report you and your parents keep. Small groups of 10 to 12.

AgesAges 9–18 · grades 4–12 Length8–12 week cycles · 2–3× weekly CostFree Taught byA certified strength and conditioning specialist, who is also a cardiothoracic physician associate Register
Medicine & Mastery

Dance Discovery

Designed, not yet funded

Movement, discipline and performance — and what training actually looks like.

What you will learn

  • Movement fundamentals: posture, alignment, balance, control
  • Rhythm and counting, so you can pick up choreography instead of copying it
  • How a routine is built and taught
  • How performers condition and protect their bodies
  • Performing — the difference between doing the steps and holding a room

What you leave with

A piece you have learned and performed in front of an audience.

AgesAges 7 and up LengthSix weeks · weekly CostFree Taught byWorking dancers and choreographers Tell me when this opens
For companies and funders

Each unfunded program is one workshop away from existing

Our own budgeting puts a one-day Discovery cycle at roughly $2,000 to $3,500, and a full 10–12 week athletic development cycle at $10,300 — venue, materials, protective equipment, instruments, and support for the professionals who teach it. That is the whole gap between a curriculum sitting in a folder and thirty young people in a room.

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Registration

One form, every program

Registration for all ten programs runs through a single form on the For Parents page, where you will also find what happens on the day, who supervises, and what you will be asked to sign. Use the Register button on any program above and it arrives with that program already selected.

Go to registration
Stay in touch

Hear about the next session first

We announce dates about six weeks ahead and places are limited by how many clinicians and artists we can put in a room. Subscribers hear before anyone else.

Program dates, what we have delivered, and how to take part. A few emails a year, never more. We do not share your address with anyone, and you can unsubscribe from any email. For parents and adults — students should ask a parent to sign up.