By Sarah Jones | Development Manager
Ten years ago, Chris Balme had an idea. As a teacher in West Philadelphia, Chris saw a wealth of potential in the students from his seventh grade class but observed an evident disconnect between what they were learning in the classroom and their understanding of how it applied in the real world. Stemming from that observation, the Spark Program was born.
Chris, working with co-founder Melia Dicker, launched the program in the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of 2011 with 11 students in Redwood City. Ten years, five more cities, and thousands of student-mentor matches later, Spark’s mission to create apprenticeships for youth from underserved communities encourages seventh and eighth graders from the Peninsula to Philadelphia to experience first-hand the relevance of education beyond the classroom. Spark students explore careers, build confidence, skills and social capital needed to be engaged in their education, on track for high school graduation and ready for success in high school and beyond.
In June, Spark concluded its most impactful year of programming to date. Across Spark’s four regions, nearly 900 middle grades students were matched with a caring, adult mentor and challenged to complete a project that tackles a real world problem that interests them. Through this program, Spark is making a great impact. Nationally, 92 percent of Spark students have graduated or are on track to graduate on time. While growing its impact and reach in all four regions, Spark is investing in quality, scale and long-term sustainability to be able to serve more students in more regions in the future.
During the 2016 program year, Spark is making program enhancements to expand its reach and programming to better serve students in need of support. With the kick-off of fall apprenticeships right around the corner, Spark is putting the finishing touches on Spark Online, a web-based platform that delivers Spark’s programming in a fun and interactive way from a digital environment. This year, Spark is projecting to serve more than 1,000 students throughout Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and the Bay Area while continuing to have strong impacts for students preparing them to be engaged, on track and ready for their high school and future careers.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
