Helping with the homework

United Way supported Friends of Simon (FoS) recruits, prepares and assigns university students as literacy tutors in the Lower Mainland.

FoS works with cooperating sites (agencies and schools) to increase school success through after-school, Saturday and summer programs in small group and individualized settings, particularly with newcomer and indigenous K–12 students.

When Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Friends of Simon project was launched in spring 2006, United Way of the Lower Mainland was involved from the start.

We helped initiate this tutoring project that matches university students to at-risk children, most of them newcomers to Canada or aboriginal children. We brought together potential tutoring site hosts, linked SFU to local child-serving agencies, and developed the funding partnership agreement.

In 2010, FoS served 230 children a week at 14 sites in Burnaby, Surrey and Coquitlam.

The following story was written by SFU student and Friends of Simon tutor, Grant Petersen.

I look around the room… Aha! A boy with nothing to do! I remember him. Last visit, he was wrestling and calling out… and throwing paper rockets.

Read more.