Mission Statement
Paul Cummins founded New Visions Foundation in 1994, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The organization’s core belief is that all children deserve an excellent education and in order for children to learn best, they need to have their social, emotional and physical needs met. Thereby, the Foundation’s goal is to find innovative ways to provide a wide-range of learning based programs to as many of our underserved children as possible, catalyzing change in American education.
In New Visions’ commitment to equity for underserved urban children and youth, it strives to create sustainable partnerships by launching and co-launching:
- New Roads School
- Charter Schools
- Special programs focusing on specific underserved populations:
- Foster Youth (Fostering New Visions)
- Probation Youth (New Roads for New Visions)
- NVforLENZ (New Visions for Lennox Educational Neighborhood Zone)
Over the past 16 years, New Visions has launched schools that would provide a more equitable access to educational excellence. The first was New Roads School in 1995, an independent school committed to economic and ethnic diversity in its student body. Dr. Cummins saw a huge demand in Los Angeles for new charter schools that was not being met.
With an expansion of its original mission of starting new independent schools, the Foundation partnered with Pueblo Nuevo, and with ExED, a specialized management firm, to design its first charter school’s site and curriculum. That new school became Camino Nuevo Charter Academy in 2000.
The Foundation continued to partner to launch more schools including Los Angeles Academy of Arts and Enterprise (LAAAE) in 2005 and New Village Charter High School in 2006 both serving low income, predominately at-risk student bodies. To further effect change, New Visions expanded its scope to include educational programs and social services. In addition to academic excellence, all New Visions programs incorporate Dr. Cummins’ "five other solids": environmental education, human development, the arts, physical education and community service. These are considered critical elements to any program that New Visions develops.
Description
New Visions works to serve underserved and at risk youth in Los Angeles. We work with forster youth, formerly incarcerated youth, and with the most at risk sutdents to try and shift the trajectory of their life.
Our goals are:
To connect each child with a supportive adult mentor.
To ignite a passion in each child.
Expose them to the arts.
Create a game plan to ensure they graduate.
