New Hampshire Teens Provide Weekend Snacks and Meals to Hungry Peers

The Sebastian Indian Social Projects (SISP) works with socio-economically disadvantaged communities, providing social services like healthcare and employment assistance with a primary focus on educating youth. SISP has focused on educating the local female population, which has helped empower them economically and led to several women receiving jobs outside of their village. SISP has also educated several students who were forced to drop out of traditional school and provides supplementary activities along with their standard education, such as skating and coding clubs.

There are numerous problems with the education system, and the Red Bull Amaphiko Academy helps activists figure out how to tackle these issues. From racism to trauma survivors, these activists have started movements dedicated to helping improve conditions.

The Communities in Schools program (CIS) places trained navigators in low-income schools to provide wraparound social support, helping students and families access public benefits, cover emergency expenses, provide behavioral counseling and address barriers that prevent students from succeeding academically. The non-profit has been helping students for 50 years, serving 2 million children across 26 states, and has seen significant academic and economic outcomes, including increasing high school graduation and college enrollment rates.

Educational Talent Search provides personalized college and career counseling to first-generation and low-income students. Counselors work with students from 8th grade through high school graduation, offering one-on-one support with college applications, financial aid forms, scholarship searches, and career planning. The program has seen nearly 90% of seniors enrolling in post-secondary education, far above its 56% target.

The Kanyashree Prakalpa conditional cash transfer scheme helps support economically marginalized unmarried girls between the ages of 13 and 18 so they can stay in school and delay child marriage. Since launching, the scheme has helped increase enrollment in school and reduce the rate of child marriage in the region.

The Bagwai Youth Friendship Association is a community group that pools money together to support locals in need, whether it be paying school fees or providing start-up capital for a new business venture. Since 2019, the group has enrolled 35 children in school, repaired broken water pipes, renovated buildings and provided food to those in need.

Free school meal programs help improve students’ health, support better academic performance and combat hunger and food insecurity. Several states have passed legislation to keep free meal plans active after federal waivers ran out in 2022. In Michigan alone in October 2023, the 3,459 school meal sites across the state served 10,064,686 free breakfasts and 17,659,809 free lunches.

Lumen High School enrolls pregnant and parenting teens, providing a “learn-as-you-go” approach to learning that makes it possible for them to parent and stay in school. The school provides full-day child care, free baby supplies, mental health counseling and other supports to help get students to graduation day. All the Lumen High School students who graduate have been accepted into college, with 95% enrolling or choosing to start working within the six months after graduation.

To better serve Black students, Joe Shoemaker Elementary School uses “equity cohorts.” Teachers select four to seven students of color who are reading below grade level and then focus on building relationships with them, helping to nurture their social and academic skills. Over the past two years, they’ve seen improved test scores and reading levels among students who participated.

The Transforming Lives and Communities Initiative converted an office space into a free library and resource center for local youth during the pandemic, providing them with internet access, books, games and other educational materials, including a Reading Clinic to teach local youth how to read. The Initiative continued and expanded from what started as a small venture with less than 10 participants, to over 1,000 registered users.