Your support has helped make the EV Afterschool Program uniquely long-term, comprehensive, and relationship-based: we recruit, train, and match university student volunteers with children and teens (3d to 12th grade) from Boston’s inner city in multi-year tutoring and mentoring relationships. EVcorps volunteers travel to Dorchester for weekly afterschool tutoring sessions and participate in mentoring activities including regular Saturday workshops and activities on campus.
The EVtutor-tutee relationship is closely supported by EVstaff, who provide School Advocacy (including regular school visits, intervention, referrals and support for school transfers, college preparation and enrichment), and Family Advocacy (including regular home visits, parenting support, and crisis intervention). We work to (1) keep EVkids in school; (2) teach them positive “life skills” and habits of success; and (3) launch them into college or other post-graduate programs. Our comprehensive strategy of combining multi-year, quality mentoring relationships and academic and life skills support with school and family advocacy is essential to achieving these goals. Your support makes it all possible.
First in her family, college-bound Barbara Austin with her proud mom
“I would have never made it this far without EV. I walked in a shy sixth grader, and I am now a confident senior ready to enter college.”- Barbara Austin, EVkid ’10, now at Framingham State University
EVcorps student volunteers serve for an average of 36 months, establishing a strong bond of support with their individual mentee, and graduating to become life-long agents of positive social change. In 2011 we are expanding from Harvard to take on an inaugural class of Boston College student volunteers that will allow a 50% expansion of our Afterschool Program.
Over the last five years, 94% of EVkids have returned from one year to the next and have a high school graduation and college matriculation rate of 93% (compared to a high school graduation rate of only 58% among their peers in the Boston Public Schools). In 2010 and 2011 fully 100% of EVkids went on to college.
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