Bridge Builders Winter 2023 Newsletter

WINTER 2023

Bridge Builders Foundation (BBF), a 501c3 non-profit, is a “community influencers” that currently serves over 500 youth of color annually through one of three Dedicated Programs (STEM, Mentor, and Scholars) and and underrepresented communities within Greater Los Angeles through their targeted initiatives on healthcare awareness and financial literacy.

BBF is a social impact organization leveraging relationships of its network of communitybased organizations and stakeholders to strengthen the capacity of smaller grassroots organizations. www.bridgebuildersLA.org /BridgeBuilders #BuildingExcellence

Dr. Ernest E. Just Youth Science Program Exposing, Inspiring, and Supporting Diversity in STEM

For the United States to maintain its global leadership, we must invest domestically and grow a strong, talented, and diverse STEM workforce. Innovations from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields have touched nearly every aspect of human life. STEM careers are among the fastest growing and highest paid in the US. The Bridge Builders Foundation (BBF) Saturday Science Academy and Summer Marine Science Program seek to expose, inspire and support ethnic minority youth and women in STEM studies and career pursuits. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), just 18% of black students scored at or above proficient in STEM content, and students that qualified for reduced-price lunch scored 28 points lower than more affluent students. ... Continued Next Page

41st Annual

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SCHOLARSHIP AWAR DS

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BBF provides an immersive program that seeks to broaden access, success, and diversity in STEM through classroom instruction, hands-on demonstrations, and field exploration of local science facilities and worksites. These activities allow students to expand their STEM content knowledge, foster students’ interest in STEM topics, and help students realize how STEM disciplines are connected to daily life experiences.

BBF allows ethnic minority youth to experience STEM content through a culturally relevant lens. The primary goals of BBF’s program are to reduce the stigma of STEM, normalize STEM academic pursuits and empower ethnic minority youth with a sense of agency and belonging in STEM careers and academic pursuits. Participating students benefit from over 200 hours of instruction, covering a broad range of life, physical, and earth sciences, and also benefit from instruction and interaction with minority and women professors, field practitioners, and chaperones.

BBF’s program engages youth in rigorous, high-quality, and purposeful learning experiences through an informal, out-of-school format. According to studies, STEM success begins at home. Only 13% of surveyed students said they were first taught about STEM by teachers, and almost 20% reported that they taught themselves. In communities of color, informal STEM learning and exposure is critical.

Informal STEM learning exposes students to authentic learning experiences beyond the classroom walls and augments school site engagement.

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ABOUT THE PROGRAM The BBF program is sustained and strengthened through strong corporate, philanthropic, and community partnerships. Classroom sessions and experimental activities are provided on the campus of California State University at Dominguez Hills (CSUDH). Our instructional and curriculum engagement is led by staff and field practitioners from USC College of Environmental Sciences, UCSD/ Scripps Institute, CSUDH, and other institutions.

Students also benefit from real-life engagement through hosted instruction and field trips to the facilities of our corporate partners, including American Honda Motor Company, Infineon, Metro, Hitachi, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas, and others.

Our Saturday Science Academy begins in January and continues through July. Our summer marine science program is provided over three consecutive weekends in August and capstones with multiple days of live-in experiences on a college campus (UCSD/Scripps Institute at La Jolla and USC Wrigley Center at Catalina Island).

According to the American Camp Association, the average cost of summer camp is around $180 a day, and a sleep-away camp is $450 a day.

ALL Bridge Builders Foundation Programs are provided to youth FREE of charge!

Thriving Under The Influence Mentor Program

Positive African American Youth Development African American and Latinx boys face a myriad of systemic and societal challenges. To effectively address these issues, we must explore “dynamic” approaches to existing performance paradigms.

Preparing our youth to thrive in racially hostile environments requires focusing on more than “content standards” and embracing deliberate approaches that address “social and emotional” factors that young black boys face outside the schoolyard.

Bridge Builders Foundation has committed to augmenting existing resources by providing and/or arranging for services and resources that are nonexistent or insufficient in communities of color.

Positive youth development is critical for African-American youth as they negotiate a social, political, and historical landscape grounded in systemic inequities and racism.

Our approach embraces many factors identified in the Positive African American Youth Development (Grills, 2015). We address Racial Socialization, Civic and Community Engagement, and Future Orientation.

We host weekly sessions and discuss resilience, hard history, anger management, surviving police encounters, and healthy living. Our goal is to infuse in our youth a sense of agency, belonging, competence and power.

Black men from multiple disciplines and across multiple age groups share real-life experiences and openly address issues and challenges unique to the youth of color. The process begins with sharing pro-social

values and grows as mentors are looked upon as role models, ultimately blossoming into meaningful two-way dialogue and engagement. Mentoring engagement is led by lead mentors certified in Healing Centered Engagement. Participating in youth report increases confidence and agency and benefit from the engagement, encouragement, and experiences of older men of color.

Participating students benefit from structured in-person group sessions, individualized mentor support, virtual math tutoring, weekly virtual mentoring sessions, and participation in bi-monthly “incentivebased” community enrichment field trips to educational and recreational venues. Many also serve as “Youth Ambassadors,” where they are paid to mentor, tutor, and coach younger students within their communities.

For many, this is their first job and provides valuable financial resources, work experience, and a structured introduction to civic engagement and community service.

Studies show that every 1 dollar invested in quality youth mentoring yields a $3 return in benefits to society. BBF has established strong relationships with local fraternities, faith-based, and community service organizations that provide thousands of hours of volunteer support that further leverages BBF’s reach, resources, and access for participating youth.

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Youth and College Ambassador Assault on Illiteracy Bridge Builders Foundation, has partnered with Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified School Districts to provide expanded educational support for targeted youth.

Through the Read Aloud Partnership (RAP), BBF hires college students (College Ambassadors) to work on elementary school campuses during school hours and read with youth in small groups to strengthen their language skills and build confidence.

During shared book reading, children learn to recognize letters, learn story structure, and experience increased phonological awareness and literacy conventions such as syntax and grammar.

In addition, reading aloud increases vocabulary, teaches youth about peer relations and coping strategies, and builds selfesteem and general world knowledge.

This engagement is a supplement to the Youth Ambassador Program, where BBF employs high school students to provide classroom support, mentoring, and tutoring for students during Saturday school. The Youth Ambassador program provides our students leadership opportunities, employment experience, financial resources, and structured civic engagement. Many report this as their first source of employment.

This Ambassador program employs over 60 students from three partner schools (King-Drew and Fremont High School in LAUSD and Jordan High School in LBUSD). Currently, over ten elementary schools benefit from the support, and several hundred additional elementary school-aged youth are supported.

BBF is also committed to expanding our prescriptive programs by augmenting existing resources with dynamic support. Youth in under-resourced communities are disproportionately less likely to read or have access to books at home. The statistics and impacts of “book deserts” and the lack of in-home personal books in our communities prompted BBF to launch an Assault on Illiteracy. Last year, BBF gave out over 800 books to youth to take home. BBF plans to increase that number to 1,500 in 2023.

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