Who knew 2020 would start off like this. March brought forth the start of a pandemic, which led to millions becoming unemployed, students struggling to continue their education, and many other issues that became hard to face as each day passed. Having to find jobs to help pay the rent and trying to expand one’s experience outside of school proved to be challenging. This includes running a non profit program remotely.
Building Blocks for Kids (BBFK) has faced it’s series of ups and downs during the start of COVID. Let’s begin with the downs.
Running a nonprofit requires financial support, but no matter how many grant applications were completed or calls/emails that were made, the program received rejections and even no responses.
Building Blocks grows from the involvement of students, but partnering with schools hasn’t been easy. For now, students are attending school virtually and to accommodate this situation, BBFK is planning on creating a website, but we haven’t received support yet to expand this project.
Despite this, there were more positives than negatives. BBFK has changed, experienced growth, and has high hopes for the New Year.
COVID initiated the start of BBFK’s College Internship program, where an array of students from Stanford, Cal Lutheran, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, and UCLA, came together to expand the program through the use of their individual skills and unique perspectives.
BBFK aims to improve the curriculum it offers by giving the students the chance to not only learn about financial literacy, but also careers ranging from medicine to technology.
The program received many volunteer offers from people who were interested in sharing their career experience with high school students through the creation of virtual job presentations.
With high hopes of helping the Animo Compton community, the program has already raised $15,640 out of $65,000 towards the implementation of the BBFK: MORE program so the students of Animo Compton Charter High School can be given the chance to map out their own futures.
We are hoping through our continued efforts and support in the New Year, we can raise the remainder of the money, so that no student is left out and has the opportunity to learn something new. We will continue to grow and expand our team by inviting more college students, applying for grants, and asking for many more volunteers to share their careers and college experiences.
All in all, our ultimate goal is to put our program into action, where we can help underserved communities become financially literate and career-driven. I hope those of you who are reading, resonate with our mission and can support our cause. As we approach the start of the new year, we will go into 2021 thinking more optimistically and look forward to working with each and every one of you to support our mission and Animo Compton Charter High School.