College Mentors for Kids Notre Dame

College Mentors for Kids is an Indiana state wide non-profit organization that pairs at-risk youth with college student mentors.  The children (first- through fourth-graders) are brought to the college campus once a week for two hours.  They participate in fun and educational activities centering around one of our four activity topics: higher education, culture and diversity, community service, and economics for kids.  The goal of the program is to give exposure to higher education to children who lack such exposure in their home lives.  We encourage the children to pursue college degrees, hoping that they may become first-generation college students.The Notre Dame chapter of College Mentors has been operating since the fall of 2005.  At that time, we served ten children.  Since then, we have expanded to serve 30 children from two different elementary schools.  We are currently looking to expand to serve an additional ten children for the second semester of this school year.  With an increase in the number of children comes obvious increases in the cost of our programming.  We will be spending more money on supplies, snacks, and recognition for both our children and our college student volunteers.  We are committed to ensuring a high standard of programming for our children, and it is difficult to maintain that level while attempting to serve as many children as we can.