CLEVELAND — The Neighborhood Leadership Institute needs your help. The group is looking for volunteers for its new pilot program, helping to keep students invested academically, emotionally, and socially, in partnership with Partnership for Greater Cleveland.
“These kids have gone through the pandemic and situations that most of us adults didn't experience in the same way,” said Caroline Brennan, Senior Program Coordinator at Neighborhood Leadership Institute.
The program, BRAVE Engagements, means “behaviors, relationships, actions, values, and emotions.” It focuses on students in fourth and fifth grade. Currently, BRAVE is in four CMSD schools and is led by mentors. Each in-class session builds on the other and starts with a focus on healthy relationships. Then, students go on to learn how to recognize and manage emotions, self-leaderships skills, conflict prevention, and resolution, and how to resist peer pressure.
“We have mentors from the community or also in some cases, staff members that work in the school, in different after-school programs, in different capacities,” said Brennan.
Ronald B. Adrine, President and Chairman of Partnership for Greater Cleveland added, “we're talking about a significant number of African American kids being mentored by African American adults, and same thing with Hispanic kids that may be in the mix, too. So, it doesn't mean that there are no European mentors that are associated with this, but it does mean that there's been some emphasis on trying to make this culturally specific in some respects.”
Those mentors include Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) graduates like Eric Hills.
“The things that help them understand more about themselves, contribute to them learning better and achieving better,” he said. “You're trying to cultivate a belief in them being able to do something positive… I just look forward to seeing the kids each time I come.”
According to Adrine, growing evidence shows more urban students are slipping away from academics starting in third grade.
“That loss of interest would accelerate exponentially over the next few years as children became more and more distracted by other things that were in their environment, things like sex, drugs, gangs, family issues,” he said. “So, it was important to try to come up with some kind of a methodology that would allow us to intervene with these kids, particularly kids that were at risk, so we could kind of keep them interested in school long enough for them to transition through those very troublesome and fraught times and maybe get to high school [while] still having an interest in formal education.”
With help of volunteers, BRAVE officials hope to expand into all CMSD schools.
For more information about BRAVE and volunteering, click here.
