The Tutoring Program currently matches some thirty-five inner-city children and teens with Harvard students, both undergraduate and graduate, for weekly academic tutoring sessions.

This one-on-one match-up, which usually lasts for four years, assures that each youngster in the program will receive individual attention from a caring and supportive adult who, in addition to tutoring, serves as a mentor and a role model. In weekly tutoring sessions, they work on basic skills and make steady progress in reading, writing, math, and critical thinking. This includes basic life skills as well: planning, scheduling, taking responsibility for one's work, and more.

The Educational Coordinator conducts regular visits with all of the teachers of each tutee, with a two-fold purpose: to keep track of the students' progress and achievement in school (neither children nor their grades tell the whole story of what is going on in school), and to assess, from the teachers' point of view, which skills each student most needs to improve in order to be more successful in school. The Educational Coordinator and Program Director then meet individually with tutors to craft a learning plan for tutoring sessions that is suited to the tutee's specific needs.

The goals of the Tutoring Program are to improve the tutees' basic skills in reading, writing, and math, to encourage improved academic performance in school, to encourage adolescents and younger children to stay in school, and to enable older students to think seriously about continuing their education in college. Children and teens in the program have a wide range of academic abilities and emotional problems, and the program seeks to empower each of them to improve their life through education and to envisage their future in an open-ended and creative way. In recent years, 80-100% of our high school graduates have gone on to college.