New Here? Kids Hope USA
Kids Hope USAis a national organization designed to partner with local churches to send mentors into local public schools to spend time with students. One child, one hour is the heart of Kids Hope USA. One caring adult mentoring an at-risk child one hour every week. Because when kids feel loved and valued, they are better able to learn, grow, and succeed.
Kids Hope USA offers churches and schools a proven, award-winning model to meet the emotional, social and academic needs of children. Kids Hope USA programs create one-on-one mentoring relationships between adult church members, willing to give a little time and a lot of love, and at-risk elementary schoolchildren in their community who desperately need loving, caring adults in their lives. Utilizing the existing structures of churches and elementary schools as the framework for these programs, Kids Hope USA creates successful, sustainable and life-changing church-school partnerships.
The Vineyard Church has partnered with Kids Hope USA and currently has several mentors spending time each week with students at W. G. Schneckenburger Elementary School in Kenner.
For more information about Kids Hope USA please visit kidshopeusa.org or contact Rhonda Haley here. You may also download an Information Packet and Volunteer Application here.
HOW KIDS HOPE USA WORKS
Kids Hope USA is the catalyst for an expanding network of church/school partnerships. These partnerships take on the enormous challenge of kids at risk—One Child, One Hour, One Church, One School at a time—through one-on-one mentoring relationships.
ONE CHILD...
An at-risk public elementary school child who needs a relationship with a caring adult.
There is a desperate need among America’s at-risk children to be the “one-and-only” in the life of a caring adult. This need for love can only be met one child at a time. You can do something real, and be that one caring adult. So when your Kids Hope USA child asks, “How many other children do you see at my school?” you can say, “I'm here, just for you.” When kids feel loved and valued, they are better able to learn, grow and succeed.
ONE HOUR...
Sixty critical minutes each week when a trained mentor befriends a child and helps him or her acquire basic academic skills.
How much is an hour worth? One educator seems to think an hour is worth a lot. “Given the choice between $100,000 for instructional material or the love of Kids Hope USA mentors,” she says, “I would choose the love.” One hour a week, every week, is the most important hour many of these kids have. One hour of one-on-one attention, just for them.
ONE CHURCH...
Takes ownership of a program with its neighborhood school and provides a trained mentor and a behind-the-scenes prayer partner for each child.
Many church members today have a deep longing to do something real, to make a real difference. Kids Hope USA gives churches the tools they need to tap into this energy and create a meaningful, sustainable partnership with a school in their community. Kids Hope USA church/school partnerships offer churches and their members the opportunity to put their faith into action.
ONE SCHOOL...
Welcomes this proven intervention to increase the academic skills of at-risk children, while incurring no additional expense.
Our schools need help. Too many of their children face a world full of problems they didn’t create, and can do nothing about. Principals and teachers recognize Kids Hope USA mentors as an effective, proven intervention in the lives of their at-risk kids. They know how the one-on-one relationships fostered by a Kids Hope USA program restore self-confidence and personal security, and encourage academic excellence in their school.
