Inner City Youth Tutoring, Inc.

ICYT is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization providing tutoring services in Greater Metropolitan St. Louis. Over 90% of students served live below the federal poverty level. Students attend under-resourced schools with parents/guardians needing more education, are underemployed, or are unemployed.

ICYT relies solely on funds from various fundraising events, supporting organizations, businesses, foundations, individuals, and anonymous local and out-of-state donors. Therefore, ICYT is requesting donations to support its program.

ICYT's Educational Enhancement Coaches (EEC) saw improvement, with many students in core subject areas. Yet, they feel there is still room for more improvement because, at the end of the school year last year, several student's teachers of ICYT's students stated there was some improvement in students' math, reading, writing, and comprehension skills. However, many still needed to reach grade level.

Therefore, ICYT will continue to provide and enhance its program with more materials and activities in all subject areas and disciplines. ICYT will continue permanent 2-hour minimum sessions, and services will also stay online and in-person (student's preference) before, during, or after school wherever convenient for students and their families (e.g., school, library, daycare, community center) and increase sessions to three days a week as funding will allow.

ICYT will continue to familiarize parents/guardians with its program by keeping them abreast of program enhancements and their student's progress. Parents/guardians must be comfortable enough to help their students when needed. Being proactive in a student's educational and academic career will eliminate many difficulties at-risk students face in the classroom. The whole student is ICYT's focus, emphasizing core subjects and the fundamental skills needed in all these areas. Students who lack basic skills cannot advance, have low grades, and fail.

ICYT's program is instrumental in intervening and providing educational enhancement coaching as early as preschool age so at-risk youth are exposed to quality academic experiences and a positive way of life early in life. ICYT develops and creates young men and women to be productive individuals who may pursue their many aspirations in life and not believe in aspiring to be like the negative influences in their neighborhood whose futures are nothing but trouble and bleak and their only means to a future.

ICYT believes in and helps increase positive, educated black role models for future generations aspiring to be something other than what society has decided and expects of them: a product of their environment, bound for trouble. Such negative influences are the only positive role models this youth witness in their neighborhood daily, which looks inviting. But ICYT believes there is more to life, and education will afford these young people far more opportunities. ICYT provides educational enhancement early in these youngsters' lives because their environment or circumstances do not dictate their future or the education they should receive.

Student tutors, mentors, and professionals emerge from ICYT's program with young people looking up to and learning from these very individuals who came from the same environment and participated in Inner City Youth Tutoring, Inc.'s program when they were in preschool, elementary, middle, and high school. Some former students with and without disabilities have graduated from college and entered Occupational Therapy, Nursing, Engineering, Welding, Modeling, Business, Military, and Medical fields. Some have received full rides to college, while others continue to attain, obtain, retain, maintain grade-level status, go beyond, and receive honors and honor roll status.