Mission Statement & Our Vision

FGLI Thrive Mission Statement

Yale FGLI Thrive offers peer-to-peer networking, personal & professional development, and a welcoming community to first-generation and/or low-income (FGLI) students at Yale. We invite all FGLI students to engage in our FGLI Thrive programming through our Peer Mentorship Program and Community Ambassadors. FGLI Thrive staff aim to foster mutual support throughout the Yale FGLI community and increase engagement with the resources and opportunities available at Yale.

FGLI Thrive Community Ambassador Mission Statement

Yale FGLI Thrive Community Ambassadors aim to represent and serve the diverse & broad Yale FGLI community through campus wide programming that emphasizes social networking and professional growth. A student led, administratively guided organization, our Ambassadors serve as a link between FGLI student interests and institutional initiatives. By connecting students across all areas of Yale College, we hope to build a network of mutual support that empowers students to feel comfortable and confident taking advantage of all the resources Yale provides.

Our Vision

from the Woodbridge Fellow

Our vision of FGLI Thrive at Yale is this: to empower students so that their cultural backgrounds, which shape how they identify, learn, and move through the world, are foundational to their academic growth and personal development. We aim to celebrate differences while cultivating spaces where students’ rich backgrounds, their histories, communities, and ways of knowing are essential to the university’s intellectual life.
We seek to hold the challenging balance of honoring the roots of difference across intersecting identities while building an inclusive community grounded in shared resilience, solidarity, and mutual responsibility. These backgrounds actively shape Yale’s culture, values, and future.
To achieve this vision, we strive to build a community for underrepresented students that encourages critical reflection, collective learning, and meaningful participation in shaping Yale’s cultural environment. We create spaces where students can sustainably engage the institution thoughtfully and confidently, strengthening Yale’s ability to fulfill its mission of educating a diverse body of future leaders who are prepared to lead with integrity and accountability.
We believe this work is sustained by empowering students to reclaim their narratives through their own voices and by supporting them as they build power together, imagine new possibilities, and carry forward a legacy of transformation at Yale and beyond.
—Ashyah Galbokke Hewage, TD ‘27

From Yale’s mission statement, stated above, it is clear that this institution prioritizes the creation of an educational space and a vision of the future world that considers a diverse humanity, one that requires a thorough understanding of how our modern society organizes people in order to serve those rendered more invisible than others. This has resulted in an increasingly diverse student body of people of differing identities along geographies, race/ethnicity, and gender, to name a few, over the more than 300 years of Yale’s existence.

One of Yale’s most recent endeavors has involved the increased inclusivity of students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, realized by their commitment to provide need-based financial aid. However, the increasing number of students from low-income backgrounds, who are likely the first in their families to attend college, have revealed that these students often feel alone and uncomfortable in spaces that have traditionally served students of particular backgrounds. The challenges they face point to a need to support students who feel alienated from the larger student population because of their social and cultural differences, so that they might establish a home at Yale and fulfill their academic potential.

Student holds a blue sticker that says "Proud to be First-Generation Low-Income at Yale"