Support Inspiring Minds for National Volunteer Week

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Inspiring Minds' mission is to empower students for success in school and life by supporting them with trusted relationships, tutoring, and mentoring by inspired community members. We support Providence's public-school students by connecting them with well-trained volunteers to develop close connections through which young people discover who they are, gain skills to shape their own lives, and learn how to interact and contribute to the world around them.

Our two-pronged approach supports students academically by implementing personalized lessons developed by the student's teacher and building strong developmental relationships with children utilizing an evidence-based framework designed by the Search Institute. In 2019-2020, Inspiring Minds' 604 volunteers gave 14,195 hours, impacting 1,047 students. For more than 57 years, Inspiring Minds has provided tutoring and mentoring services to Providence Public School students grades PreK-5.  

When schools closed on March 13, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Inspiring Minds pivoted and created innovative programs to ensure students remained connected to their volunteers and had the resources necessary to engage in distance learning. We shifted to mentoring virtually. We delivered more than 1,000 bags of books and supplies to students' homes, created a pen pal program, and transitioned our summer learning program into an at-home program, offering synchronous and asynchronous instruction.

This academic year, we continue to engage students in our virtual tutoring and mentoring program, pen pals, and supply delivery. We also support special populations within the schools too. Our volunteers are supporting students and parents in Providence's new Virtual Learning Academy providing additional support for parent engagement, communication, and the distribution of materials and supplies. We also supported students who are experiencing homelessness this year by offering technical support, providing a full setup for distance learning, and providing ongoing tutoring and mentoring services.

It has been an unprecedented year, and the community has called upon us for more support as students fall further behind due to the pandemic.  Inspiring Minds offers all of its programs free of charge to the students and families we serve. We appreciate your support to make this happen.

$10
Funds 5 pen pall letters (with return postage)

$50
Funds a year of one Power Lunch student's relationship-building activities

$100
Provides one Explorer materials and supplies to participate

$250
Funds a year of in-school tutoring and mentoring for four students

$500
Funds 40 volunteers to attend professional development

$1,250
Funds one rising kindergartner six weeks of summer learning

Sustainable Development Goals