RADical Hope and Prairie View A&M Announce Partnership with Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women to Expand Wellness Programs to First-Year Students

RADical Hope and Prairie View A&M Announce Partnership with Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women to Expand Wellness Programs to First-Year Students 

• One Million Black Women funds the implementation of RADical Hope’s 4-week wellness program for first-year students to improve mental, physical, and emotional health.

• The program was launched on August 29th and is being offered to all first-year students at the University this year.

NEW YORK – Sept. 15…RADical Hope, Prairie View A&M and the One Million Black Women initiative today announced  a new partnership focused on student mental and physical wellness. The partnership will deliver RADical Hope’s RADical Health programming to first-year Prairie View students to strengthen connections with one another and build resilience to promote mental, physical, and emotional health skills.

The partnership is expected to impact 1,500 students at Prairie View A&M.

Sixty-four percent of college students who drop-out leave because of mental health issues, according to a National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) survey. Elevated anxiety, stress and depression threaten to drive this number even higher, yet many schools already report a shortage in mental health counselors. The RADical Hope foundation identifies, develops, scales and fully funds evidence-based programs that build resilience in young people through its core priorities: Connectivity, Engagement, Empowerment, Emotional Intelligence and Sustainability.

The foundation’s RADical Health experience is a skill-based wellness program that empowers and equips first-year college students with tools and resources to support their own mental, physical and emotional health before they reach a crisis point. Since its launch, RADical Health has reached more than 5,000 students across ten campuses and will expand to twenty-five campuses this academic year.

“Youth are most vulnerable during times of transition,” noted Liz Feld, CEO of RADical Hope. “Heading to college can be one of those stress points. Our partnership with Prairie View A&M aims to provide valuable tools to students to build resilience and make meaningful connections with their peers.  Goldman Sachs’ commitment to address the need as well as the opportunity to prepare these young adults for the future is a model of leadership.  Our goal is to reach one million students as soon as possible and Goldman Sachs’ support will help us get there.”

Prairie View A&M is the second-oldest public institution of higher education in Texas and is a historically Black college/university. Prairie View offers over 70-degree programs including agriculture, engineering, natural sciences, business, the arts, nursing, and criminal and juvenile justice. Prairie View’s economic impact on the state of Texas exceeds $765 million annually, and has facilitated more than $4.3 billion in lifetime earnings for the degree recipients.

“We’re honored to partner with RADical Hope to bring their programming here to our campus,” said Dr. Ruth Simmons, President of Prairie View A&M University. “Our goal is for every student to be equipped and empowered both at and beyond our university, and RADical Hope will help us do that.”

Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women has committed $10 billion in direct investment capital and $100 million in philanthropic capital over the next decade to address the dual disproportionate gender and racial biases that Black women have faced for generations. This partnership is aligned with the initiative’s work to close health and education gaps for Black women across the country, and this program specifically addresses the goal to increase access to mental health services.

“Health and educational services are more limited in Black communities, and programs like RADical Hope will help us bridge this gap throughout the U.S,” said Dina Powell McCormick, Global Head of Sustainability and Inclusive Growth at Goldman Sachs. “It’s a privilege  to fund  an incredible program at a school that has a strong history of serving Black women.”

The program at Prairie View A&M will run for a total of 4-weeks and started on August 29, 2022.

ABOUT RADICAL HOPE

RADical Hope was founded by Pam and Phil Martin following the 2017 suicide of their son, Chris Martin, during his junior year at Gonzaga University. The Foundation is committed to addressing America’s youth mental health crisis by strengthening connections and building resilience in young lives. Learn more at www.radicalhopefoundation.org.

ABOUT PRAIRIE VIEW A&M

Designated an institution of “the first class” in the Texas Constitution, Prairie View A&M

University is the second-oldest public institution of higher education in the state. With an established reputation for producing engineers, nurses, and educators, PVAMU offers baccalaureate degrees, master’s degrees, and doctoral degree programs through eight colleges and schools. A member of The Texas A&M University System, the university is dedicated to fulfilling its land-grant mission of achieving excellence in teaching, research, and service. For more information regarding PVAMU, visit www.pvamu.edu.

ABOUT ONE MILLION BLACK WOMEN

In partnership with Black-women-led organizations, financial institutions and other partners, Goldman Sachs has committed $10 billion in direct investment capital and $100 million in philanthropic capital over the next decade to address the dual disproportionate gender and racial biases that Black women have faced for generations, which have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. The initiative, One Million Black Women, is named for and guided by the goal of impacting the lives of at least one million Black women by 2030. Goldman Sachs’ research Black Womenomics has shown that sustained investments in Black women will catalyze economic growth, making for not only a fairer, but also a richer society.