About

Children Rising is an Oakland-based 501C(3) non-profit organization founded in 2001. The agency helps children attending public schools most affected by poverty, violence and educational inequity by raising awareness and rallying community support for their needs; and by galvanizing and guiding volunteers to teach, mentor, and nourish the children so they may develop academic and life skills to realize their God-given potential.

Our vision is that every struggling child is reached by a caring community at a critical time in their life to nurture hope, the courage to dream, and the opportunity to thrive. We work closely with school teachers and principals to provide in-school one-on-one literacy tutoring, one-on-one math tutoring, and library services to primary grade school students during the school year. We also provide a work-based learning and mentorship program for high school students. Our volunteers are recruited, trained, and supported on site by Children Rising staff, and screened according to Oakland Unified School District volunteer requirements.

Children Rising offers an array of services to 36 under-resourced public schools in four main program areas – Career Bridge, Health4Kids, Kids Count, and Succeeding by Reading. Partnering closely with elementary schools, our intervention programs Succeeding by Reading and Path2Math are designed to reach second- and third-grade students observed to be far below their expected grade-level proficiency. By intervening at this critical point, thousands of young children have reached grade-level reading and math, and have avoided getting lost in the system. Seventy percent of participating students advance two or more grade levels in both disciplines by the end of the academic year. Through our work-based learning program CareerBridge, we provide in-school business education workshops for high school students during the school year, then match these students with paid internships and mentors during the summer. One hundred percent of high school students participating in CareerBridge complete high school.