Lovett School issued the following announcement on Nov. 30.
Covid impacted many things at Lovett, and Breakthrough Atlanta was one of them. Fund-A-Scholar is an event that happens every year to raise money for Breakthrough Atlanta. Last year, 2020, due to Covid, the event was unable to occur.
But it came roaring back in 2021. I spoke with Michelle Guski, the Director of Development for the organization, Michelle Guski, who said how grateful the organization is for “the outpouring of support we received from the nearly 400 guests who attended Fund-A-Scholar. After taking a year off from our event in 2020, it was a bit of a challenge to navigate how our event would look this year. And the results of our event were above-and-beyond what we could have dreamed of."
Ms. Guski said the outcome of the 2021 Fund-A-Scholar was “amazing.” The event raised $390,000. Breakthrough raised 20% more than their goal and 35% more than they did in 2019. “It was clear that people were excited to get out of the house, participate, and support Breakthrough,” Ms. Guski said.
Breakthrough Atlanta is a nonprofit organization that was started 25 years ago at The Lovett School and has since become its own nonprofit organization.
The organization has a dual mission: to increase academic opportunities for highly motivated, underserved students and get them into college ready to succeed; and to inspire and develop the next generation of teachers and educational leaders.
Breakthrough Atlanta provides a 6-year long program designed to help students be on track for high school and college. It also offers amazing opportunities for college students interested in the teaching profession to get an insight into the education world by applying to be a teacher at Breakthrough. These college students are called Teaching Fellows.
While the signature Breakthrough experience takes place during the 6-week summer program, students also come in 10 Saturdays every year for “Super Saturdays.” These are opportunities for middle school students to work on their “soft skills.” This includes working on their technology skills or interpersonal skills.
The high schoolers have the opportunity to prepare for college by having college counseling, scholarship opportunities, ACT, SAT prep, and lessons about financial readiness. These skills are important because students might not be provided the same resources at their schools.
And this is all the more important because of the pandemic. “Covid was hard on all students,” Ms. Guski said. But she pointed out that for economically disadvantaged students, it was even harder.
In 2020, Breakthrough was fully virtual. In 2021, Breakthrough hosted a hybrid in-person and virtual summer program. The organization provided more than just educational resources during these hard times. “To ensure students could still have access to the two nutritious meals per day they would have received in-person, we delivered meals and provided gift cards to help the families purchase groceries,” she said. This helped so many families whose jobs were impacted or eliminated by Covid.
This organization is such an important part of our community and it is special that it takes place at Lovett. As a community, it is important to help this nonprofit by attending events such as Fund-A-Scholar. By supporting this organization so many less fortunate students in our community will be able to get on the road to success.
Original source can be found here.
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