Native American After-School Program

Dear friends,

NAAF’s Academic After-School Program is in full swing, and thanks to your kind and generous support we continue to grow and thrive in our mission to provide a safe environment for the children of the Gu Vo District to hone their academic skills, strengthen their ties to their culture and community, and to enjoy a healthy and active lifestyle free from the influence of drugs and alcohol.

Today on the Tohono O’odham Nation, where a 51% dropout rate continues to be the norm, students like River and Tia (pictured below) face endless obstacles on the path to completing high school. Bright, passionate, dedicated youth like River and Tia need access to additional resources to further the education they receive at the local, underserved, Bureau of Indian Education run schools. These extra resources are only made possible by kind donors like you who believe and invest in the futures of River, Tia and their classmates through supporting the Native American Advancement Foundation’s (NAAF) numerous academic programs, which are designed to make sure our students not only stay in school, but stay interested in a lifetime of learning and personal accomplishment. As a direct result of your support, the critically high dropout rate on the Tohono O’odham Nation has begun to turn in a positive direction, but there is still a long road ahead.

River attended his junior year of high school at our virtual learning center. He enrolled back at the local high school because he needed one-on-one help with his schoolwork. River had to attend summer school in order to catch up with the rest of his class, and with the help of our after school staff and tutor, River received his high school diploma this semester. In October, River was accepted to the Art Institute in Santa Fe New Mexico for the spring semester.

Tia is a 5th grader at San Simon Elementary School, and attends our after school program. At the beginning of the school year, Tia was struggling with her math. Now Tia has one-on-one study sessions with our after school math tutor, and has significantly improved in this subject. The after school program has math worksheets that the students work on and use to study, and Tia has been receiving 100% on her worksheets. This past quarter Tia received a math award at the awards assembly at her school.

Each after-school session devotes time to helping the kids to be successful in school, with lessons in math, reading, writing, composition, and STEM. This year, thanks to your donations, NAAF was able to hire an additional tutor to aid the kids with their homework in a variety of different subjects, and sources from the local school report that the kids who are involved in the program have shown great improvement.   

From all of us here at NAAF, we can never thank you enough for helping these youth lift themselves up. The future holds everything for them, and they are ready to earn it through hard work, belief in themselves, and some extra-special help from donors like you.