YES International Summer Service Program Design for High School Students

Abstract

YES Prep Public Schools is a group of public charter schools focused on serving students from low-income communities across Houston, Texas. One requirement of all YES students is summer school between grades 5 through 10 and two mandatory summer internships between grades 10 and 12. Due to financial concerns many students who desire to do an international internship cannot afford any available programs offering such internships. In 2005, we introduced a new, internal, international summer service program for YES high school students to satisfy our summer internship requirement. This paper focuses on the process and results of designing, implementing, and modifying the program using the Lean Startup methodology through its first few years before it won a national award for its character-building work.