ABOUT RISING STARS YOUTH FOUNDATION

 

Rising Stars was founded by Paul Savramis in the early 1980’s as a series of summer camps but has since been on a 20-year journey of changing the lives of countless youths and their families.

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Mr. Savramis created Rising Stars in response to the need for a yearly program that mirrored the philosophy of his previously accomplished summer camp series. In 1996, the program became a non-for-profit youth foundation with the summer camps and clinics as mainstay programs.

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In 2001, Daniel Gimpel, a product of Rising Stars and pupil of Mr. Savramis, became the program’s full time Program Director. Mr. Gimpel worked closely with Mr. Savramis to maintain the essence of the program’s core values and mission, while also establishing a broader identity of using basketball as a medium to promote education.

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In 2007, Mr. Gimpel became the Executive Director and was joined in his efforts by ESPN’s Jay Williams, another former Rising Star alumnus and Mr. Savramis’s pupil, and Althea Williams, a school administrator and staunch advocate of innovative educational methods of Rising Stars.

The three joined Mr. Savramis to help expand the organization. The expansion included a girls program, a full time Educational Director, and an all encapsulating approach to the overall personal growth of the children involved. Rising Stars work has since been cited by the governor of New York and the President of the United States for its accomplishments.

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Today, Rising Stars is staffed with dozens of dedicated professionals and is considered of the elite, educationally-centered youth programs in the country.