Summer Programs

DREAM?s year-round program model builds a strong support network around each participant. And it is a heck of a lot of fun, providing a hook to retain both mentors and participants. The relationship between a child and a caring student mentor is at the heart of our program and has a significant influence on the child. One-on-one activities are tailored to the individual mentee’s needs and interests and are guided by the Search Institute’s ?Developmental Relationships? Framework and the Elements of Effective Practice. These relationships cultivate self-confidence and help to establish new norms through role modeling, caring attention, and positive messages. Relationships between mentor-mentee partners in DREAM average three years, and Summer Enrichment plays a huge role in this. When academic year mentoring is paused over the summer, Summer Enrichment maintains youths’ interest in DREAM from year over year.

Our group programming generates a broad network of caring, educated adults actively involved in each child?s life. The group dynamic also builds a powerful sense of belonging and identity, supporting children in safely pushing their comfort zones, building teamwork, and practicing positive peer interactions. In the summer, groups embark on periodic local and regional adventure trips, introducing them to new experiences and opportunities and providing a conducive environment for strengthening and deepening relationships between youth and Summer Enrichment Coordinators, as well as relationships between one another.

DREAM engages mentees for the long-term, starting with children in kindergarten and growing with them through high school graduation. By the time a DREAM participant graduates high school, she will likely have had over 10 years with the organization. This longitudinal intervention provides sustained contact with caring adults and a constant pipeline of meaningful experiences and opportunities.

Summers are a particularly important focus for us at DREAM. Our children often lack basic enrichment activities and adequate nutrition over the summer. Many of them spend significant time in unsafe and unsupervised spaces, missing out on important opportunities for growth. The summer opportunity gap (and related summer developmental slide) has very real short-term and long-term effects on youths? academics, health, and behavior, and it accounts for almost half of the achievement gap between our DREAMers and their peers. To help close this gap, we offer three programming opportunities over the summer: 1) daily onsite summer enrichment programming; 2) week-long residential summer camp sessions at Camp DREAM; and 3) regional adventure trips.

Our approach is to have the students in the program identify some of their social challenges and we correlate that with what it takes to be successful in sports with what it takes to be successful in life.

At this program students will have the chance to engage in year round quality experiences including but not limited to; participation in dance classes, national competitions and preparing for HBCU colleges with some of the greatest influences. The youth will have the chance to go on community field trips where and when they will be exposed to cultural art that will provide a framework to explore their intellectual curiosity alongside mentorship.

To help underrepresented students develop strong foundation in STEM and gain exposure to careers in Medicine and Health Sciences.
Students would have the chance to:
1. Revise and solidify content taught in previous grade which were not well understood.
2. Learn new concepts and develop strong foundation for concepts/topics to be taught during the next school year/grade
3. Gain skills in English comprehension, writing, logical and abstract thinking
4. Gain insight into various STEM and medical career paths and the needed courses requirements.
5. Join guest speakers series to hear first hand from professionals in diverse fields of STEM: For example physicians, care providers, scientists from different fields, engineers etc.
6. Gain insight first hand experience in resume preparation and job/college admission interview strategies
7. Exposure to DEI.
8. Gain practical skills in study ethic, test-taking, time management and resume preparation

what is special about our programs approach is that we are very intentional with bringing the right young people together to strengthen relationships that would otherwise become negative relationships based on the neighborhoods our young people comes from. At this program students will have a chance to express themselves without being judged.

At Steppingstone, we focus not only on academic skills and school applications, but we also emphasize social emotional learning and relationship building. Every Scholar has an Advisor who works closely with their family, and we have multiple social workers on staff who oversee facilitation of our social emotional curriculum. We plan activities that allow Scholars to socialize and engage with both peers and adults in the community.

Green Ambassadors is the only program in Boston providing high school students with hands-on work experience, combined with Outward Bound?s one-of-a-kind approach to social emotional development, expeditionary learning, and service. The program is designed as a 3-year continuum, where each year builds upon the previous years? experience.

Green Ambassadors is also unique because of its setting. The program creates a kinship between its young people and their environment, thus building a foundation for a lifelong appreciation for natural spaces. Much of this starts through their personal connection to the natural environment of Thompson Island. Green Ambassadors frequently refer to the Island as their ?second home.?

Green Ambassadors emphasizes leadership, as well as environmental and social justice, and empowers its participants to become agents of change in the world and in their own communities. This includes the Green Ambassador community itself. The program curriculum has been shaped in many ways by student feedback, and is continuously adjusted to meet needs and desires expressed by participants. Recently, Green Ambassadors advocated to incorporate the issue of equitable access to public green spaces into the curriculum. Current Green Ambassadors have also been very involved in building a new aquaculture program component into the existing curriculum, with a focus on aquaculture?s role in mitigating sea level rise due to climate change.

Finally, Green Ambassadors provides a highly supportive and inclusive environment. All Green Ambassadors staff is trained in culturally responsive instruction, trauma-informed care/practice, and age and pandemic-rooted mental health issues we can expect to encounter in our youth. Additionally, as several of the program?s directors and crew leaders have been Green Ambassadors alumni, they have an especially strong understanding of our students? backgrounds, lives, and experiences in the program.

In surveys conducted by Boston Beyond, the summer 2021 Green Ambassadors program scored higher than other comparable programs on the following measures:
– ?Staff build relationships and support individual youth,?
– ?Supportive adults are present,?
– ?Staff positively guide behavior.?

TBC intentionally focuses its mission and vision on healing the traumatic impact of systemic racism on Boston?s youth of color.

As such, TEEP provides rigorous culturally and linguistically affirming instruction by:

1) guiding the development of social emotional skills to empower students to become leaders through academic and experiential learning opportunities, field trips within the community to reconnect and give back, peer mentorship, paid employment, and exposure to a variety of careers;

2) integrating student wellness through the employment of a summer clinician to address additional mental health needs created by the twin pandemics (COVID-19 and widespread racial injustice) and keep our youth on track in skill development, while also helping our staff bring their best selves to work through the provision of clinical care;

3) incorporating TBC’s three essential community practices into every aspect of programming, enabling the creation of supportive communities, which address the impact of root issues; and

4) utilizing TEEP?s values-based curriculum to help youth be intentional about who they are and what they aspire to achieve. Each week of the summer program is focused on one of TEEP?s core values: Respect, Responsibility, Restraint, Reciprocity and Redemption (The 5Rs), which together enhance resilience, develop positive racial identity, and restore relationships.

Our intensive Summer Institute offsets summer learning loss by providing 150 hours of essential academic and college-ready skills and knowledge. Students return to school fully prepared to build on the rigorous academic foundation laid in the summer courses. Each summer class is project-based with students applying the content and skills learned throughout the summer to a final project showcased at the annual Urban Scholars Project Showcase. Past projects have included PowerPoint presentations, live readings, demonstrations, and poster presentations.

Our staff understands the importance of accepting and celebrating everyone’s culture, and our students feel they can speak their native languages with confidence and be understood and valued. Teachers design programming to include all learning styles by using active learning, small groups, and project-based learning within the BPS-aligned curriculum. Teachers activate and build on students’ background knowledge at the beginning of each new topic/unit, using concrete examples and experiences to anchor students’ acquisition of new knowledge. As we continue to engage students in project-based learning, students will grow a love for learning and see the curriculum as specifically tailored to their needs and realities as immigrant, culturally, and linguistically diverse learners.

At this program, students spend time with old friends and develop new friendships, spend ample time outdoors, engage in a variety of engaging, hands-on STEAM activities, and participate in field trips. Parents often describe USES in feedback surveys and listening sessions as “second family” and “community”. Children form secure and healthy attachments with their teachers, who are deeply committed to children’s development and success.

The program is diverse racially and economically, and students learn from one another. A critical part of club48’s impact is its placement within a Two-Gen approach, where the organization also supports children’s parents with a set of programs through its Family Mobility Department. The Two-Gen model is a research-backed framework that supports families as a whole thrive. Through community and skill-building engagement events and workshops, access to a Coach, resources, and information to increase income, families are aided in their stabilization and growth. Students who are historically or systemically disadvantaged and/or growing up in poverty are more likely to break out of poverty as adults because of skills picked up in club48 and because their parents are increasing their income, resources, and skills. The combination of youth and parenting programming together have been shown to have the greatest impact on disrupting generational poverty.

(Note that in the previous page, only club48 staff and programming costs were included, not Family Mobility)

VROCC engages and empowers Latinx immigrants, especially families living in East Boston who are generally not engaged with the city?s traditional arts organizations. As immigrants ourselves, our team understands the multiple and often interlocking challenges that emerge when you move to a new country and need to adjust to a new cultural environment, especially if you do not have strong social support networks.

Facilitated in Spanish by immigrants originally from Latin America, VROCC?s staff, artists and community partners use the arts to build social and cultural capital and foster racial justice in the face of intersectional (race/class/gender/immigration status) oppression. Our team encourages participants to learn about and directly engage with traditional Latin American celebrations of culture through art and dance, helping participants to preserve and deepen ties to their ethnic identity.

Strengthen their math and reading skills through hands on STEM activities, We will provide field trips, assemblies, art activities and science enrichment.

Transformative relationships coupled with high quality programs are at the core of our work. Our team of youth development professionals empower young people to succeed in school, discover their artistic passions and skills, adopt healthy lifestyles, successfully pursue college and career pathways, and become community leaders. Young people have the opportunity to join the WEH as early as age 7 and participate in programs through college graduation. The skills they learn and the friends they make, stay with them for a lifetime. Our 43,000 square foot, state of the art facility, enables us to design and deliver comprehensive programs across a broad spectrum that meet the needs and interests of young people from all backgrounds and age groups. As an organization committed to removing barriers to participation, our annual membership fee is only $15 and provides access to all program offerings.

work with curriculum they’ll see in their upcoming grades, giving them an advantage as they return in September.