With the new school year beginning and students going back to in-person teaching, we look forward to students gaining their learning experience back. However, as we maintain optimism, this year certainly was filled with setbacks for our nonprofit: Building Blocks for Kids (BBFK).
The majority of staff from BBFK encompasses college interns. During the summer of 2020, we were happy to receive our first set of paid interns from Stanford University. This opened doors to the possibility of hiring more students across the nation, so we reached out to schools, produced constant emails, developed social accounts where students could directly apply to join BBFK, and conducted meetings with school site staff. Despite these efforts, BBFK had a difficult time hiring college interns. The program received many rejections from campuses to enlist their students. Some schools didn’t have the financial capability to fund student interns, so as a solution, Building Blocks for Kids made an attempt to apply to a number of grants, including the USC grant and LA2050, but ultimately, we weren’t amongst the list of those who were awarded. Hiring student workers and gaining grants weren’t the only issue BBFK had to face.
Volunteers always provide a promotional value for kids to learn something new from new faces. They are what make a program run smoothly and engaging. However, BBFK faced difficulties in recruiting volunteers. Although people appeared excited to work with BBFK, there were disappointing moments when those interested stopped contacting the program or verbally stated that they could no longer be a volunteer.
You would expect all of these challenges to have darkened our spirits, but with the bad, there have also been good moments.
Building Blocks for Kids gained three interns from UCLA and UC Berkeley. Although there is a combination of paid and unpaid interns, each individual does their part to help strengthen the program all while learning something new.
We were also excited to receive emails from foundations/individuals who were interested in partnering with the program. Through productive meetings, the BBFK program steadily secured more partnerships and volunteers that could help build the program for this upcoming school year. We look forward to having a positive impact on students back in a classroom setting. This is especially true for students attending USC Hybrid and Hueneme High. The Building Blocks for Kids: MORE program will be running at both of these schools during the Fall and Spring semesters of 2021-22. Students will have the chance to learn about a variety of careers all while becoming financially literate.
The BBFK: MORE program is partnering with EASY’s promotion fundraiser to help raise funds, so that the program can be successfully managed, scholarships can be created, and college interns and employees can be paid.
Attempting to raise funds for the program isn’t always an easy task. It’s often hard to reach the goal of obtaining funds for the students, interns, and scholarships, so apart from fundraising, BBFK always tries to look into other ways of raising money. One of those ways includes potentially receiving aid from the general public.
For example, recently Governor Gavin Newsom signed a homeless funding package that aimed to make housing affordable and tackle the homelessness crisis. In an article titled as, “Governor Newsom Signs Historic Housing and Homelessness Funding Package as Part of $100 Billion California Comeback Plan”, BBFK believes money like this could perform wonders in building the education of students within America. If funds like this were supplied to non-profits, like BBFK:
3,000,000+ classrooms and teachers would be educated
$40 billion would go to scholarships
2,000,000+ paid college internships
800,000+ jobs would be created
13,000,000+ high school summer internships
This is only a wish that BBFK has as we move forward to running the program in-person. As a financial literacy program, we know the importance of budgeting. It’s important to always know where your money is going and being applied to, but in the homelessness plan created by Governor Newsom, it’s hard to tell exactly how these funds are being budgeted.
As we believe in our slogan, “We Can Do MORE Together ” with funds similar to this, more people can get involved and bring a positive experience for all our high school students where learning and fun intertwine.
