About the Harraseeket Foundation

  • The Harraseeket Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose mission is to help young people imagine their future. Harraseeket is an Abanaki name, pronounced “hair-a-SEEK-it.” See www.harraseeketfoundation.org

    Harraseeket was founded on the belief that young people need intergenerational connection and support to imagine their future, and that community organizations are a great source for intergenerational connections. 

  • Since 2017, Harraseeket has We’ve been testing and building programs to help hundreds of young people imagine their future since 2017, in Northern Virginia schools, faith communities, and nonprofits. Since 2020, Wwe’ve emphasized supporting underserved students, particularly at Herndon High School, where 70% of the students are minorities and a majority participate in the free and reduced lunch program. Herndon has been a great platform to test our growth and potentiallearning platform for us!

    We are in development of developing a single template program that can be offered to a wide variety of community organizations,  (whether that’s schools, employers, nonprofits, faith communities, clubs, and community groups,) that are interested in helping young people. Over the next year, we plan to operate and improve   this program at Herndon High School before offering it to others. 

  • “Harraseeket” (pronounced “hair-a-SEEK-it”) is inspired by the name of the river that empties into a beautiful, fully enclosed harbor in South Freeport, Maine, where Steve Parker, one of The Harraseeket Foundation founders, grew up.

    The name is probably the mispronunciation by White settlers of an Abanaki dialect whose meaning some have suggested is either “river full of obstacles” or “river of many fish.” We think both meanings fit well into the mission!

About The Imagining Your Future Program

  • Imagining Your Future is a mentorship program offering s students a unique opportunity to engage with adult volunteers who will help high school students imagine their lives after high school using a curriculum we’ve developed, while and encouraginge at-work learning experiences to help them act on what they imagine.

    We sometimes refer to “Imagining Your Future” as IYF.

  • Like most mentoring programs, we emphasize intergenerational connection and relationship building. 

    But there’s much more to IYF than that.

    It also offers students a structured, detailed curriculum for guides and mentors to work with students in “life mentoring” and “career mentoring” over the course of the school year, while tracking progress and “growth” throughout the program. These topics Having topics to discuss throughout the year facilitates and encourages deeper conversations and connections. 

    IYF also creates opportunities for encouraging and helping students to learn about and experience the workplace. Our “design thinking” approach offers students feedback on the paths they imagine, and opportunities to make adjustments and try new and different paths. For more on the impact of this type of learning, see www.harraseeketfoundation.org/impact-of-internships. 

    IYF is about the "whole student" -- more than just work and careers. Conversations extend to value systems, obligations to self and others, choices we make about living in service to the world, and how who we are translates into how we choose to live our lives.

  • The curriculum consists of a series of exercises that, over the course of the year, take students on a journey of “life mentoring” and “career mentoring.” The curriculum is divided into three pillars of “who, what and how” exercises:  

    The first pillar helps students assess who they are – such as their strengths and interests, influences, values, opportunities, and challenges, rewards and consequences.

    The second pillar helps student ask “what do you imagine?” – addressing students’ vision, motivations, influencers, career options, learning and doing, work-life balance, service, and challenges.

    The third, and last pillar helps students figure out how to get there. Topics include job preparation, potential roadblocks or hurdles, boundaries, career readiness, resilience, signposts, forks in the road, and outcomes.

    The following diagram depicts these 3 pillars: