National CARES is a pioneering, community-mobilization initiative that directly addresses the life-shredding effects of intergenerational Black poverty and lays a blueprint for community recovery. Anchored by a 58 U.S-city affiliate network, we are the nation's recognized leader in the recruitment, training and engagement of African American mentors, and the only organization in the U.S. providing holistic programming on a national scale to advance Black children, growing up in poverty. Our work provides children and low-income parents with the emotional, social, academic and career-readiness support they must have to become self-sustaining, successful contributors to their family, community and our society. We assist the oft-forgotten Black—and Brown—people we serve in building bridges to the brighter futures they long for.

CARES’ unique, 32-week-long curricula are built to help children heal the multiple traumas of impoverishment and override their debilitating effects, that unaddressed will be life-long. CARES’ evidence-based healing initiatives unearth understanding, resilience, faith. They instill hope, critical thinking skills, racial pride, and a love for learning and wellness in mind, body and spirit. Our beloved young ones come to understand that they are greater than even their greatest challenges, authors of their futures, as they share their stories and heal together, supported by our trained psychologists, social workers and volunteer mentors in CARES’ wide-spreading Wellness Mentoring Circles. Our students and children in detention learn to transform their thinking and behaviors, how to love themselves, as well as one another, and prepare for success in school, careers and life.

One in six Black children is living in extreme poverty, which the federal government defines as a yearly household income of $12,129 or less for a family of four with two related children. Sadly, CARES’ restorative initiatives are singular—they are the only holistic programmatic works being built for the advancement of impoverished children and parents nationally.

National CARES Mentoring Movement exists to secure and transform the lives of the nation's most vulnerable population—Black children living in poverty. Their lives are being shredded by many of the very institutions created to nourish all the children of our country. Our mentors and local CARES Affiliate Leaders are devoted to advancing our young who are isolated and mostly written off by society. We are writing them in!