Schools may be closed due to COVID-19, but ULI San Francisco continues to deliver the UrbanPlan program to hundreds of students around the Bay Area, thanks to creative solutions from our members, staff, volunteers, and teachers. As classrooms around the nation rapidly transition to online formats, so has ULI SF’s UrbanPlan program, which went fully remote under a tight turnaround.

Olya Krasnyk, Assistant Vice President at Sares Regis Group and a long-time UrbanPlan volunteer, recalled the quick transition from in-person to remote facilitations at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, the first local school to implement the virtual delivery of UrbanPlan. “Our first remote facilitation at Gunn High was coordinated within 48 hours and worked beautifully. The students took to the new format like fish to water. And while in person interaction is rarely replaceable, we certainly replicated it effectively with the tools available today.”

Since this first successful pilot, UrbanPlan has been delivered or is currently being delivered virtually at three other Bay Area schools: San Jose State University, Piedmont High School, and Eastside College Preparatory School. Over 200 local high school and university students will engage with the UrbanPlan program remotely this semester, supported by ULI SF members filling over 60 volunteer slots.

“We have been inspired by the actions taken by our committee members, volunteers, teachers, and students to bring UrbanPlan’s curriculum to classrooms in ways we never could have imagined before this crisis began. We are particularly proud of the efforts by many to ensure our first ever classrooms at Eastside Prep in East Palo Alto continued as planned!” said ULI SF’s UrbanPlan committee co-chairs Dave Hopkins, Chief Operating Officer of Residential Development at Sares Regis Group, and Erica Weber, Principal of Business Operations and Legal at Ballast Investments.

The complications and disruptions of this global pandemic have created opportunities for all of us to find innovative methods of connecting with each other and delivering value. Stay tuned as ULI SF members continue to explore new and creative ways to advance our various initiatives and further ULI’s mission in this virtual world.