The long-term goals of the Youth Achievement Foundation are:

• To provide a dedicated mentor for every qualified child in the schools we serve.
• To continue supporting those students through high-school graduation.

We plan to achieve these goals by implementing a systematic growth program that allows us to grow vertically and horizontally.

Using our existing base, we will achieve vertical growth by following our current students as they move into higher grades, which means adding additional middle and high schools. Horizontal growth will be accomplished by adding more elementary schools.

Each new program requires approximately 15 additional mentors and a teacher facilitator. In addition, because more stringent testing requirements are being placed on the elementary schools, we began a separate tutoring initiative in the fall of 2001 for third-graders in the Garland Independent School District which we would like to copy in our other cities.

In 2002 our Garland program also began a pilot “English as a Second Language” (ESL) program for parents. This is a certified ESL course taught in conjunction with Eastfield College’s Department of Continuing Education. The program has been a huge success.

By participating in these classes our parents not only learn English, but they give a powerful example to their children as to the importance of an education.

As an additional benefit, several of our parents have been able to perfect their English well enough to pass their “Citizenship Test” and have become United States citizens! We are especially proud of this and would particularly like to thank The Verizon Foundation for their sponsorship.