Join the Aspire Education's Board of Directors

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A Unique Moment

Of 211 non-profit organization considered, Aspire Education was just chosen for the first-place Impact 100-East Bay award. Now we are looking for new members to join our Board of Directors.

If you have a passion for helping underserved students meet their potential and an interest in working to help a grassroots nonprofit make new connections and scale, then this is the board for you! Here's a little more about us:

The need is unprecedented. But so is our ability to meet that need.

Since 2005, Aspire Education has gathered a small community of tutors and mentors to empower East Bay students with the skills they need to succeed. In math. In science. In languages. And all from a place of love and investment. In 15 years, we’ve impacted over 9,000 middle and high school students.

But what makes Aspire unique, is our students don’t just receive mentoring, they’re also invited to become mentors themselves, through our flagship program Community Reading Buddies.

Every year, two-thirds of Oakland’s low-income kindergarteners arrive to school already behind. Graduation is 12 years away, but they’re already 4 times as likely not to graduate high school.

That’s where Community Reading Buddies comes in. By training middle and high school students in leadership and communication skills, and pairing them with young students behind in literacy, those students learn critical literacy skills over the course of two months and are ignited with a passion for reading.

But there’s a problem. In-person logistics proved impossible to overcome during the school year. So for its entire history, Community Reading Buddies had only been a summer program. 2020 changed that.

When COVID-19 hit, Community Reading Buddies partnered with award-winning digital literacy platform BookNook. With their easily customizable curriculum, we ran our first virtual programs, not only during the summers but through the entire year.

And the results - have been astounding. For every 8 week cycle, our more-than-300 young readers have made four months of progress in literacy. Over a full school year, that would be a jump of more than two grade levels.

But it’s not only the younger children who receive an education. So do the Youth Mentors. Before they even begin, they’re given training on how to connect, understand, and communicate, all of which helps prepare them to become independent, emotionally intelligent adults. Now we're positioned to scale and make a meaningful difference in the lives of thousands of students.

But we need the right leaders to help us connect, network, and expand awareness of Community Reading Buddies. You can be a part of creating that change.