NYC SALT’s mission is to engage, inspire, and empower youth from low-income, predominantly immigrant communities in New York City to reach their full potential through photography. Our vision is to restore great visual art instruction for New York high school students and make the arts and especially creativity an important component of their preparation for academic and career success. Our goal is to help a diverse cohort of students to unlock and develop an identifiable point of view, often based in their own life stories and experiences, while providing them with the artistic and technical skills, along with career savvy, to achieve excellence in the field. We achieve these goals through an innovative model that combines rigorous, sequential visual art instruction taught by well-known artists and highly-experienced creative industry professionals, along with individualized mentoring, college preparation, career exploration, placement in internships, and job readiness training.