Walmart Foundation grant to build academic success in Club Youth through the Academic Achievement Hour program
Oceanside CA— Boys & Girls Clubs of Oceanside (BGCO) received $2,500 from Walmart Foundation to build academic success in Club Youth through the Academic Achievement Hour program.
BGCO strives to keep youth on track to graduate high school with a plan for their futures. The Academic Achievement Hour program provides fun and interactive teaching opportunities to inspire youth to learn and stay excited about learning. BGCO staff provide visual and hands-on homework help for all types of learners, for instance, using multi-colored marbles to visually explain fractions and probability problem solving. Academic Achievement Hour provides resources to ensure youth become high-achieving students and reach their highest potentials.
BGCO provides an innovative STREAM (Science, Technology, Research, Engineering, Arts, Math) program to teach youth practical and necessary skills to succeed in the 21st Century marketplace. Youth get to explore projects like Claymation, a multilayered art form that teaches kids sculpting, photography, and video editing and production. Youth must use trial and error to figure out which features will create their desired outcomes and at the end, have a creation they are excited to share with their fellow Club members, staff, and their families at home.
Academic Achievement Hour includes interactive project-based learning activities to teach youth teamwork, strategy, and research skills. Staff may split youth into teams and ask each group a question that fits inside an overarching project unit. Staff may ask questions like ‘How do arctic animals stay warm in the snow?’ Groups must then use the right key words to find an answer on google, and will learn that most of these animals have a thick layer of blubber. This leads youth through question after question, sparking connections and creating curious minds as to how the different ecosystems are the same and different.
Funding from Walmart Foundation will go towards purchasing supplies for STREAM programs, homework tools, educational games and software to advance technological competence.
“It is so important to us that we equip youth with the tools they need to succeed not only in school, but in life,” said Jodi Diamond, CEO. “We are so thankful for community partners like Walmart Foundation because they help ensure we meet the needs of each and every youth that walk through our doors so that learning is intriguing instead of frustrating. We want youth to enjoy education and be curious to continue exploring their hidden interests.”
For more information about the Boys & Girls Clubs of Oceanside please contact Hannah Moss at HMoss@BGCOceanside.org, call (760) 433-8920, and visit our website BGCOceanside.org or Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/BGCOside .