TWKF transforms boardroom for new tutoring program
This fall, the Trevor Williams Kids Foundation (TWKF) introduced another program targeted at fulfilling its mission to help keep Montreal’s youth off the streets and in school.
The Tutoring Zone is targeted primarily at young, inner-city student athletes. Fully funded by the foundation, it provides a supervised and informative environment for kids to do their homework four days a week after school.
Though the national dropout rate is slowly declining, it is still a major concern, as many Quebec students continue to face enormous obstacles. The Tutoring Zone offers much needed support for youth who have the ability to succeed, but simply lack the motivation.
Many coming from low-income households or broken families have parents who are either unwilling or unable to provide them with the help and support they need to achieve academic success.
The Tutoring Zone provides these youth with the attention and help that they need to achieve their potential and ultimately, to stay in school. The tutors consist primarily of volunteer university students who serve as academic instructors, but also as personal role models. When it came to deciding how to allocate the scarce funds to maximize the program’s impact, TWKF came up with a novel idea. It wanted to ensure that as much of their funding as possible was being put back into the program and not used for administrative costs.
Sitting around the conference table, the solution suddenly became clear: the foundation would give up their boardroom and run the program in-house at their Greene Ave. offices. Just like that, it was out with the table and in with the desks, as TWKF became the new headquarters of the Tutoring Zone, taking in as many children as they could squeeze in.
TWKF has been involved in creating and running preventative programming for youth since its creation in 2002. However, this is the first program to be run fully in-house.
This allows the foundation to put more money into the program and directly benefit more youth. It also allows it to witness, on a day-to-day basis, the positive effects of the work they are doing for the community.
For the past three weeks, youth have been streaming in and out of the offices, ready and willing to work hard — simply because they know someone that cares is watching.
For more information, call Sheri Elefant at 514-231-4244, email sherielefant @aol.com, or visit www.twkf.com.
