Boost! Oakland

Website: http://boostoakland.org/index.html

Description

Boost! was founded in 1997 to help children in the West Oakland overcome the many obstacles in their lives and, ultimately, become their best selves. Boost! steps up to meet the community’s needs by providing long-term individualized support to each student in the program. Boost! carefully selects volunteer tutor/mentors, trains them, and pairs them with students based on the tutors’ talents and the students’ needs and interests.

The mission of Boost! West Oakland is to empower West Oakland youth with the skills and confidence needed to become positive contributors to society. Boost! fosters healthy attitudes toward learning and strengthens students’ academic performance and self-esteem through individualized one-on-one tutoring and mentoring, field trips, and family events.

Literacy Programs

Each tutor/mentor provides their student with individualized academic and social-emotional support for a year or more. Despite the fact that students are referred to Boost! specifically because of academic and/or social difficulties, they routinely make large gains in literacy, math, motivation, and self-esteem assessments. For many of the children this is the only time that they have such a high level of dedicated, positive attention from an adult, and the effect can be life-changing.