Kicking Off the Program Year

Labor Day has come and pass marking the unofficial end of summer. With the end of summer comes the beginning of a new Program Year for UrbanFUTURE. Next week, programming will be in full swing at Fanning Middle and Mann Elementary schools with over 100 students signed up to meet with tutors and mentors. Already, parents have attended orientations, volunteers have been trained/re-trained and students have completed pre-test assessments.

At both sites, 4th - 8th grade students will have an opportunity to participate in INSPIRE Mentoring, IMPACT Tutoring and Explore! Careers. The full menu of programs will help students grow as a student and as a person in preparation for high school.

UrbanFUTURE has hired Ray Sewell as a Community Specialist to work specifically with parents on taking on a leadership role in their child's education. This new position will provide
UrbanFUTURE parents with an additional resource in navigating their child's educational path. Ray and the Team Leaders will host several parent events during the year to engage, instruct and listen to parents on the challenges they are facing.

The biggest news for the new school year is UrbanFUTURE's expansion into three new school sites. Team Leaders have already begun meeting with parents, teachers and students at L'Ouverture Middle and Jefferson and Meramec Elementary schools. Beginning in October, students at these sites will have the opportunity to begin the IMPACT Tutoring program. There may also be opportunities for students to attend Explore! Careers' field trips this fall. INSPIRE Mentoring at these sites will not begin until January.

This promises to be an exciting year for UrbanFUTURE. We look forward to working with more students, parents, volunteers and teachers than ever before as we all work towards eliminating the academic achievement gap in urban schools.

LAUNCH-ing to New Levels

UrbanFUTURE recently formed LAUNCH, a friends-of group that is working to take UrbanFUTURE to the next level. The primary objective of LAUNCH is to help UrbanFUTURE grow its support base by engaging current supporters more deeply in grassroots efforts and reaching new supporters through peer-to-peer interaction. Currently, LAUNCH is comprised of current tutors and mentors who have expressed an interest in taking their volunteer participation to another level.

LAUNCH will plan and execute quarterly fundraising/friendraising events as a way to introduce new people to UrbanFUTURE. These events will provide individuals an opportunity to learn more about the work of UrbanFUTURE and how they can support our work of eliminating the achievement gap in St. Louis.

LAUNCH will also be leading a volunteer-driven campaign this fall to raise money and new donor and volunteer referrals. The campaign will culminate with the "Dine In For UrbanFUTURE" event on Wednesday, October 27th. Stay tuned for more details on how you can participate in "Dine In For UrbanFUTURE."

If you are interested in joining LAUNCH, please contact Tim Weiss at (314)776-3434 or tim@urbanfuturestl.org. Help us LAUNCH UrbanFUTURE to new levels!

UrbanFUTURE Leadership Retreat

For two days, UrbanFUTURE staff gathered and reflected on what it means to be a leader for UrbanFUTURE. With the recent doubling of the staff to prepare to expand to new school sites, this also provided an opportunity for all the staff (new and old/veteran) to get to know one another better, while discussing topics related to UrbanFUTURE and leadership and enjoy some fun at Frank Van Bree's (UrbanFUTURE's CEO) lakehouse on Lake Perry.

We talked about what leadership means and how we as employees can be better leaders at cultivating love, generating energy, inspiring audacity and providing proof in everything we do from working with parents to recruiting volunteers to engaging donors. We discussed how eliminating the achievement gap cannot be accomplished with just volunteers or just schools, but requires mobilizing all of the stakeholders in a struggle to restore the education system in under-resourced communities.

Jason Julian and Maurice Horton of Urban K-Life Ministries joined the staff for a session to discuss the work of building relationships with students and parents to affect real change at an individual level, which will result in systemic-level change. They inspired UrbanFUTURE staff with their personal stories of overcoming hardship and how they've used that to help young people dealing with many of the same struggles.

The two-day retreat wrapped up with Frank Van Bree giving each staff member a copy of the book Tribes by Seth Godin. The book will help to keep the conversation going about how we can all be better leaders and how UrbanFUTURE can lead as an organization.

With the school year set to begin next Monday, getting away for 36 hours provided us all with a chance to learn, grow and reflect on the work we'll be doing this year.

Gather for UrbanFUTURE

A few weeks ago in this space, I talked about how you can support UrbanFUTURE's efforts, but those were more general ways to support UrbanFUTURE. Today, I want to talk about a specific way you can help spread the word about UrbanFUTURE to family and friends in a social, non-threatening environment.

Several months ago, two different UrbanFUTURE volunteers approached me about their own ideas for engaging their networks in the work of UrbanFUTURE. One mentor decided she'd like to host a luncheon with some of her friends, so she could tell them a little bit more about the organization and encourage them to get involved as volunteers and/or donors. The casual luncheon at the mentors house has resulted in over $500 in gifts and a few women interested in volunteering with UrbanFUTURE.

Another mentor, told me about how a group of guys within his profession get together for happy hour every other month. He thought it would be cool if each month a different charity was featured. The guys donate $20 to the charity and get a chance to catch up with one another and learn more about the work of the charity. As luck would have it, UrbanFUTURE has been the featured charity for the first two of these happy hours, and will again be the featured charity in October. To date, the happy hours have raised just under $400, but more importantly, 20 new individuals (and counting) have been introduced to UrbanFUTURE.

Anyone can do this. Whether you want to use a specific party (birthday, anniversary, holiday), a regular get together or plan something on your own, you can help get the word out about UrbanFUTURE to those in your network and spend time with family, friends and co-workers in the process.

If you are interested in hosting a get-together on behalf of UrbanFUTURE, please contact me (Tim Weiss) at (314)776-3434 or tim@urbanfuturestl.org. UrbanFUTURE will provide any informational materials and will have someone come to your event to talk about how people can get involved in UrbanFUTURE's work.

Ringing in the New Year

UrbanFUTURE will be ringing in the New Year this coming Monday. Why are we celebrating the New Year at the start of August? Because it will mark the start of the 2010-11 fiscal year, which comes with great anticipation and excitement.

To kick of the New Year, UrbanFUTURE will be welcoming 9 new program staff members to our ranks. This group of very talented individuals come from AmeriCorps, Teach for America and Jesuit Volunteer Corps. We have former school teachers and camp directors. Some of the new program staff will be replacing staff at Fanning and others will be headed to expansion sites to begin the acculturation process with parents, teachers and students.

As part of the New Year "festivities", there will be a staff retreat in Perryville, Missouri. With the near doubling of our staff, this will be a great opportunity for people to get to know one another and to set the tone as as staff for the entire year. A big focus of the retreat will be on leadership and helping each staff member grow as a leader during the year.

We are looking forward to the best year UrbanFUTURE has ever had in 2010-11. We hope you share our enthusiasm for the upcoming year, and we hope to see many old and new faces this fall as programming gets under way.

How You Can Help

UrbanFUTURE is gearing up for a very exciting school year this fall. After last week's successful interview weekend, we are getting ready to welcome new Team Leaders to the organization in August to begin the acculturation process at new school sites.

We have been hitting the volunteer recruiting trail hard at local cafes, major corporations, farmers' markets and outdoor concerts. We expect to be doubling our volunteer corps for the upcoming year from 200-250 to 400-500.

Finally, we're finalizing our development plans for the start of the new fiscal year on August 1st. This October, we will be conducting our first ever volunteer-driven campaign to raise money and referrals. In conjunction with the campaign, UrbanFUTURE will be holding its inaugural trivia night in November.

With so much happening at UrbanFUTURE, now, more than ever, we need your support. There are several ways you can help us out. You can sign up to volunteer as a tutor or mentor. Tutors and mentors spend an hour a week with a student at one of our school sites. Tutors focus on helping student's with homework and helping them improve their grades. Mentors work with students on goal-setting, character development and literacy. Click here to learn more about becoming a tutor or mentor and fill out an application.

If you are unable to volunteer one hour each week, but you would still like to help out, UrbanFUTURE is getting ready to start a "Friends of"-type group. This group will help to promote UrbanFUTURE, assist with fundraising events, make calls to thank donors and advocate for UrbanFUTURE whenever and wherever possible. For those interested in getting involved in this group, please call Tim Weiss at (314)776-3434 or e-mail tim@urbanfuturestl.org.

You can also help us simply by connecting UrbanFUTURE with your family and friends, who might be open to learning more about UrbanFUTURE. One of the best ways UrbanFUTURE can expand its reach in the St. Louis community is by utilizing the networks of current supporters. This will help grow our base exponentially. Referrals can be sent to tim@urbanfuturestl.org.

Finally, we always need financial support. UrbanFUTURE provides its INSPIRE, IMPACT and Explore! programs at no cost to the school district or the students and families who participate in them. For only $10, a student is able to meet with a tutor for one week. $50 covers the cost for a student to participate in the Explore! program for 1 month. For $250 a student will be able to meet with a tutor for one semester. $500 will pay for a student to meet with a mentor for one quarter. $3,000 will cover the cost for a student to participate in INSPIRE, IMPACT and Explore for the entire year. To make a donation to UrbanFUTURE, you can do so online or by mailing your donation to:

UrbanFUTURE
3145 S. Grand Ave.
Ste. A
St. Louis, MO 63118

If you have any questions about making a gift to UrbanFUTURE, please contact Tim Weiss at tim@urbanfuturestl.org or (314)776-3434.

We appreciate your continued support of UrbanFUTURE's efforts to close the achievement gap. Together we are helping urban youth see and believe in their possibilities!

UrbanFUTURE's Solution to Eliminating the Academic Achievement Gap

The following post is text from a recent grant request that UrbanFUTURE submitted for the Bank of America Neighborhood Builder's program. This represents UrbanFUTURE's strategy and vision for solving the academic achievement gap in urban schools.

Poverty is an age-old problem in our nation’s urban communities. In order to solve this problem, the educational achievement gap must be bridged—one community cluster at a time. UF defines the community cluster according to the public school system’s geographical zoning. Each “community cluster” revolves around a hub middle school and the elementary schools that feed it. Utilizing the community cluster approach, UF reaches every school-aged child in a given zip code who shares a common educational path.

Once the cluster is defined, UF approaches supplemental education by recognizing the isolation that exists between three primary groups – the home, the school and the community. Our key initiative is the UrbanFUTURE Restoration Model, which seeks to repair the traditional bonds between home, school, and community that poverty has broken. UF staff brokers these connections and is housed within the school building, allowing the school to serve as a center for these groups to connect through our innovative mentoring and tutoring programs. Through this community-cluster based restoration model, we are addressing generational poverty at individual, institutional and community-wide levels.

The primary objective of the Restoration Model is to ensure that 4th through 8th grade students possess the academic acumen to master high school as well as the mindset to see and believe in their possibilities. To achieve this vision, UF focuses on five key outcomes: literacy, academic growth, character formation, parental involvement, and career preparation. The combination of these focal points creates a formula for success in eliminating the achievement gap.

This is what UrbanFUTURE believes will solve the academic achievement gap and in turn help communities out of poverty.