Building Bridges is a tutoring and mentoring club based out of Myers Park that partners with Hidden Valley Elementary. This club began as a peace project through youth peace action. Youth Peace Action holds an online peace platform to deliver virtual and live peace education, training, and mentoring to schools and teachers that put kids at the center of peacebuilding. The two programs are the Leading Peace Project Teams experience available to interact with other clubs for 500 dollars per youth-led project. My Peacebuilder Foundations online certification, accompanied by a teacher toolkit, is distributed to schools at no cost. The leaders worked closely with an advisor to come up with a peace project, and the leaders decided on tutoring and mentoring kids at schools with high levels of low-income students. The club leadership, which includes my brother Sam, decided to work with Hidden Valley Elementary because of the connection with the school: our father works there as a teacher. The leaders worked for months planning this club, and finally, their interest meeting was held at the end of the 2021 school year. Their official first meeting was at the beginning of the next school year. The club’s advisor is Ms. Fiore, the co-presidents are Sam Carpenter and Paige Bundon, the co-vice presidents are Lila Slayden and JN Arendale, I am the social media manager for the club, and the club coordinator is Caroline Hulbert. The drive to Hidden Valley is about a 30 min drive, so all the leaders have groups and provide them with rides to the school and back to Myers Park. The club meets every other Thursday after school from 3:00 to 4:15.
During an interview with my brother, Sam, the co-president of the club, we discussed the importance of their mission. I asked him, “What made you choose a tutoring and mentoring club?” He answered, “We were conflicted between our peace project for new gen, but an issue that we wanted to address was… education; we worked with our advisor and came up with a plan.” When asked about the progress of the children’s academics after tutoring, Sam shares, “There was a 78% increase in growth in math and 7% higher in math than all the other students, but it’s not just about statistics. The kids have improved in their social and emotional well-being. We have had multiple principals and administrators come up to us and tell us that this is their favorite part of the day. I think we both prioritize mentoring and academic tutoring,which is what I think makes the club so effective.”
However, like any club, Building Bridges faced some roadblocks. Sam says of the experience, “At first, communication with the school was difficult because the school was so busy and just planning it was a very hard process, and not only this but making the assignments and really getting into the groove of making good worksheets.” Sam adds that these assignments are based on “the lesson plans from the CMS curriculum. We will sometimes do a bunch of worksheets that have engaging activities like solving this equation to get to the end of the maze, just stuff that makes them intrigued, and sometimes we will do things like math bingo to kind of spice things up and keep the kids engaged.” Lastly, I asked him, “How did you find out about Youth Peace Action?” He answered, “I think I heard it on the morning announcements and felt like it was perfect for me. I just joined, and all of the sudden, I found myself with a group of seven other Myers Park students making a peace project.” The club building bridges has been a success, to say the least, with both Myers Park and Hidden Valley students benefiting.