November 20, 2023
Season’s greetings from Invest in Youth! As we embark on our 26th year of serving some of Seattle's most deserving students, we wanted to take some time to share our progress and acknowledge those who make our success possible.
In the 2022-2023 academic year we continued to adapt to changing school environments to ensure uninterrupted service while expanding our programming. Financially, we carefully managed expenses while strengthening our balance sheet for long-term stability to continue providing this service to our community free of charge to both families and schools.
We are thrilled to announce a return to Roxhill Elementary and expansion to Sanislo Elementary, both in West Seattle and both Title 1 schools. Overall, we have doubled hours of service with both tutoring and enrichment as weekly staples at each school. This expansion enables us to create a richer and more impactful difference for even more young learners.
Working together, we see increased self-confidence and improved interpersonal skills in our students, both key building blocks to academic success. Data gathered from last year showed our students improved their math SBA scores by 63 points and ELA SBA scores by 71 points on average — a trend we intend to further improve upon.
Vital keystones to this success are our amazing volunteer tutors. Their commitment to their local community helps narrow achievement gaps and address educational inequities for an especially vulnerable student population. We also rely on the invaluable collaboration of school administrators and partner teachers to enable the uninterrupted delivery of our programming.
Advancing our vision and mission is our board of directors, each of whom devote countless hours to ensure a smooth-running and stable organization. We are immensely thankful for their support as we partner with Cindy Sackett, our executive director, and Jenny Ho, our newly-hired program manager, to continue building on successes from the last 26 years.
We could not have achieved this growth without the support of our entire Invest in Youth community, including the financial support of individuals like yourself, corporate sponsors and foundations. You helped make our fundraising events, like our revamped spring event (the Block Party 2023) and the 13th annual IIY Golf Classic, great successes and we are hoping for even greater heights this year.
Your donation at this time will help us continue to offer tutoring and enrichment programs free of charge to families and schools!
On behalf of the students, families, educators and Invest in Youth Board, thank you for helping us make a difference.
Warmest regards,
The Invest in Youth Board and Staff