ConnectiKids, Inc.

ConnectiKids consist of two divisions: The School Year Program and Summer Program. The School Year Program consists of the Tutoring/Mentoring, Arts and Enrichment, and Alumni Programs. The five-week, full-day Summer Program offers morning academic and afternoon arts and recreation activities during the summer months. The Tutoring/Mentoring Program is for children in grades 1-6 and focuses on reading and writing, utilizing educational frameworks currently being used in Hartford Public Schools. On days that students attend tutoring, they are transported by bus directly to the tutoring site upon dismissal from school. Once they arrive at the site, they are matched with their tutor, given a snack, and proceed to focus their hour on uninterrupted reading and writing with their individual tutor with whom they are matched the entire program year. If time permits students also have an opportunity to do homework. Through a generous grant from the Greater Hartford Literacy Council and the First Book Foundation, approximately 350 books are available weekly at each site to be used by students as part of the successful literacy curriculum. Students are also able to select and take home 15 story books for their personal libraries. At the conclusion of tutoring, students are transported by bus to their designated neighborhood stop accompanied by program staff. In 1998, ConnectiKids became the beneficiary of a groundbreaking formal agreement between the State of Connecticut and the State Employees Bargaining Coalition. Through a pioneering formal agreement, the two parties signed a Memorandum of Agreement granting State employees the right to volunteer as tutors during normal working hours. Currently, over 250 Hartford children from two schools, West Middle and MD Fox Elementary, are transported weekly during the school year for one-on-one tutoring lessons with state employees at state government office buildings. Four state agencies are involved: The Departments of Public Health, Mental Retardation, Mental Health and Addiction Services, and Office of Policy and Management. ConnectiKids also has long-standing agreements with two major Hartford-based corporations: The Hartford and Aetna. Each week, students are transported to these community-minded corporations to be matched with their tutors. Other sponsoring organizations include Asylum Hill Boys and Girls Club, Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Saint Joseph College, Northwest Catholic High School, and Trinity College. The payoff of these relations is three-fold: Students are provided critical assistance with academics; young minds are opened to new worlds and future careers through exposure to real life work sites; and employees are themselves being enriched, which pays untold dividends in the workplace. It exposes children to information, people, places, and situations that they are unlikely to experience in their day-to-day lives, breaking down racial barriers and stereotypes along the way. Using the workplace as a tutoring site also aids quality control. A ConnectiKids staff member is on-site each week to monitor the session and provide support. Tutors are formally trained and provided weekly curricula based on Hartford Public Schools academic outcomes, using a variety of different models including books from the Greater Hartford Literacy Council's Books At Home Initiative and the First Book Foundation.

ConnectiKids, Inc. is an independent, non-profit community organization founded by Asylum Hill Congregational Church volunteers committed to improving the lives of children living in Hartford's Asylum Hill neighborhood and citywide. The mission of ConnectiKids is to connect kids in Hartford to their potential by providing year-round enrichment opportunities linked directly to school curricula, taking a holistic approach to youth development, and exposing kids to role models who inspire positive choices and big dreams. ConnectiKids began in 1978 when volunteers from churches and corporations located within the Asylum Hill neighborhood got together to provide occasional after-school tutoring sessions for students from West Middle Elementary School, a public elementary school. The group formed what was to be known for the next 20 years as the West Middle School Committee. Since that time, the organization has grown to include a diverse volunteer force of some 250 parents, corporate and state employees, teenagers and senior citizens, as well as a core of inspired professional educators and artists who together provide a multi-faceted, year-round curriculum of academic, enrichment and recreational programs for over 250 children. The name of the organization was changed in October, 1999, to ConnectiKids, Inc., to better reflect the program's wide-ranging impact and the connections it makes among children and adults from many walks of life.