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For Students — 5th Grade Through College

Decide
Who You
Are Before
The World
Does.

Most people spend their whole life becoming what everyone around them expected. PUPA is a 20-week season where you get to decide something different. Not a class. Not a lecture. Something that actually happens.

How to Get In What Actually Happens
The question nobody asks you
"Not what do you want to be — but who do you want to become?"
20wk
One Season
90min
Per Week
5
Things to Build
1
Resolution — Yours
Open to students from 5th grade through college. Run through your school, faith community, or local organization — not open enrollment.

"A pupa is the stage between larva and butterfly — the chrysalis. The transformation happens entirely on the inside. Most people walk right past it without noticing anything at all."

Why The Name

PUPA takes its name from biology. In the life cycle of a butterfly, the pupa stage is when everything essential is being formed — invisible to the outside world, but completely decisive about what emerges next.

Every adolescent is in a pupa stage. Something is forming right now. The question is whether anyone is paying attention to the conditions that determine what comes out the other side.

This program is.

What This Is

Not a Class.
Not a Lecture.
A Season.

PUPA runs for 20 weeks — one 90-minute session a week. You show up. Real things happen. Real conversations. Real challenges. Stuff you'll actually remember in five years — not because someone made you memorize it, but because you lived it.

No grades. No judgment about where you're from, what you scored, or what your parents do. The only thing that matters in the room is what you bring to it.

And What It Isn't

It Won't
Tell You
Who to Be.

PUPA doesn't have an agenda for who you should turn into. It's not trying to fix anything or save anyone. It's a space where five things get developed — and you decide what to do with them.

The adults in the room are from your own community. People who already know your world. They're there to facilitate — not to preach.

Creativity
Not art class. The ability to build something — an idea, a solution, an approach — that didn't exist before you showed up. That's a skill. PUPA trains it.
Problem Solving
Real problems. Not textbook problems. The kind you'll actually face — in a room, in a relationship, in a moment that matters. You'll have frameworks. You'll have practice.
Word + Action
Say what you mean. Do what you say. Most people can't do both. The ones who can — they're the ones people trust, follow, and remember.
Self-Check
Knowing when you're off. Knowing why. And having the internal equipment to course-correct — without needing someone else to do it for you. That's rare. PUPA builds it.
Representation
Stepping into rooms that don't look like yours. Not to perform. Not to rescue. To be present — genuinely — with people whose lives are completely different. That's a skill that never goes out of style.
What Happens

The 20
Weeks,
Honestly.

I
You Write Your Resolution
Ten commitments. One personal goal. A reflection on what this season is for. Not assigned — written by you. Kept by you. Revisited all season.
II
Weekly Sessions Begin
90 minutes every week. Discussion-based, experience-based. Sometimes uncomfortable. Always real. The facilitator is from your community — someone who knows your world.
III
The Conversations You've Been Waiting For
Digital identity. AI and what it actually means for your future. Mental health without the clinical language. Financial literacy without the condescension. The real stuff.
IV
You Go Into the Community
Not a field trip. A visit to a faith organization you've never been inside. A children's hospital. A nursing home. A tree planting. Presence — not performance.
V
The Emergence
The final session. You share who you were at Week 1 and who you are now. That gap is what the season was for.
"The only program where the most important thing you do is write something for yourself — and no one grades it."
20wk
One Full Season
90min
Per Session
5
Things You Build
1
Resolution — Yours

Three age-adapted tracks — 5th–8th, 8th–12th, and 10th Grade through College. The content meets you where you actually are — not where a curriculum committee decided you should be.

The Resolution

You Write It.
You Own It.
You Keep It.

Every season begins the same way. Before any session starts, you write your Resolution — a personal document that belongs entirely to you. Not a form. Not a checklist someone designed for you to fill out.

Ten commitments. One personal goal. One reflection on what this season means to you. You revisit it throughout the 20 weeks. You end the season reading it again — and deciding for yourself what changed.

No one tells you what your commitments should be. That's the whole point.

Find Out How to Join
I
I commit to showing up — physically, mentally, honestly — every week.
II
I commit to saying what I mean, even when it's easier not to.
III
I commit to doing what I say I'll do.
IV
I commit to listening before I respond.
V
I commit to being honest with myself about when I'm off.
VI
I commit to being present — in every room, with every person.
VII
I commit to building something — even if I don't know what yet.
VIII
I commit to stepping into spaces that are unfamiliar to me.
IX
I commit to not letting the season pass without deciding something about myself.
X
I commit to finishing what I started — and knowing why I started it.
GOAL
Your personal goal for the season — written by you, for you.
How to Get In

You Can't
Sign Up
Alone.

PUPA runs through communities — schools, faith organizations, youth programs. Your community has to bring PUPA in, and a trusted adult from your community runs it.

This is intentional. The people who know you — who already exist in your world — are the ones who facilitate. Not a stranger from a website.

So here's what you can do: tell someone who can make it happen. A principal. A youth director. A coach. A parent. Send them to our community page. That's how a PUPA season starts.

Tell Your Community Leader
Know a school or org leader who'd be open to this? Forward them our community page at pupa.org/community — or use the form below to drop us a message and we'll reach out to them directly.
Tell Us About You
We'll reach out to your community to explore bringing PUPA to you.

We'll reach out to your community — and keep you in the loop.

We Heard You.

Thank you for reaching out. We'll work on connecting with your community. Keep an eye on your email — we'll be in touch.

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