Call to Community
Forty percent of Black children are born into poverty. Eighty-six percent of our children cannot read or do math at grade level. And more than one in ten Black children has a parent who is incarcerated. This is unacceptable in our land of plenty!
Imagine the United States as no longer having the world’s highest rate of incarceration but instead being the world’s leading producer of educators, innovators, entrepreneurs and a dynamic 21st-century workforce. Imagine the impact on the nation’s economy if instead of sinking dollars into prisons we invested in creating an ever-growing army of young people who feel valued and able to excel in the global knowledge economy. And for a fraction of the cost! This is our mandate! To rebuild the village. To make America truly the Beautiful!
Deepening our commitment to healing young lives and understanding that group mentoring is a low-cost way to change the predictable futures of multitudes of harmed children, CARES has built transformational programs in several of the most under-resourced schools in high-need communities. Our whole-school consciousness-changing programs are incorporated into the school day and are designed to provide students with the psychosocial and academic undergirding youngsters must have, so that despite the many odds they face, they will love and believe in themselves, aim high and succeed in school and in life.