 |
||||
    
|
Newsroom June’s Charity of the Month: School on Wheels
At the end of a long day at school, most children excitedly board a bright yellow school bus for their trip home. However, for the more than 4,500 schoolchildren in Indianapolis who are homeless, their trip home is often to a shelter where they share one room with their family members.
The cramped and unstructured environment at many homeless shelters can make it difficult for homeless children to complete and excel in their schoolwork. School on Wheels (SOW), an Indianapolis based nonprofit, is committed to providing educational assistance to homeless children to enhance and enrich their performance at school.
The MDRT Foundation awarded a $5,000 grant to SOW to fund the “Taking Tutors to Homeless Children” program, which provides individualized tutoring sessions for homeless children in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. This grant was sponsored by Joe Ivcevich, CLU, ChFC, a 17-year MDRT member from Indianapolis, Indiana.
“By recruiting volunteer tutors from the community to address community needs, [SOW]is helping homeless families focus on the importance of education so that they may gain access to resources that will allow them to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness and work toward the goal of self-sufficiency,” wrote Ivcevich.
Children make up more than 30 percent of the total homeless population in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the average age of a homeless person in Indianapolis is nine years old. SOW volunteers commit to one hour of one-on-one volunteering to assist children with their homework and studying. In the past year more 240 volunteers provided tutoring and educational support to more than 540 children. |
|||
|
|
|||
