The Garden Hills Homework Club's goal is to promote higher education, encourage learning in a safe environment, and to create positive role models for at risk youth. Garden Hills Elementary is a Title 1 School, which means that over 70% of the children’s' families require reduced or free lunch. With many of them living in poverty and having unstable home lives, the children’s' grades are slipping. We intend to help them achieve their academic goals and ultimately get them interested in higher education by using collegiate volunteers to tutor them.

As an AmeriCorps *VISTA, my primary goal is to eliminate poverty. I believe in order to achieve this goal, we must make sure that the population is being educated. Many of the children at Garden Hills live in poverty, come from unstable home lives, etc. I want to make sure that each of them has at least 2 hours a week to get their homework done, get the attention they might not be receiving outside of school, and that they have a friendly adult to spend time with them.

The Club has been an ongoing project for almost three years, and I have been involved for the past year and a half. This semester I will again recruit student volunteers to act as tutors/mentors, and they will begin volunteering shortly after. We will then meet twice a week (after they receive orientation), after school at Garden Hills to assist the children with any of their needs. I am proud to be part of this project because the Homework Club influences everyone involved greatly; the student volunteers reflect on their experience as a service-learning project in class, and the grades of the children involved have been shown to dramatically increase due to our program.

We are always looking for volunteers who are interested in working with the kids by either becoming tutors, or by doing educational presentations for the group. We also take donations of school supplies, snacks, etc. for the students to use, as well as any other children in need at the school.