Adopt a Neighbor’s mission is to provide high quality virtual tutoring to children across America from high school students. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we watched as our communities across the globe faced completely unforeseen challenges, including high rates of virus infection, tragic grief and loss, and devastatingly, the closure of many of our core community gathering places, including places of worship, camps, and schools. Presented with these challenges, our founders resolved that in some way, they would help alleviate some of the pressures facing our community. As millions of students, including ourselves, stayed home, children quickly began to feel the impact of the loss of in-person teaching from teachers as schools closed. Schools only offered virtual learning on a limited basis, and parents were often forced to step in, only compounding the stress felt by many families.

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Adopt a Neighbor’s founders have witnessed these challenges firsthand, which is why they decided to initiate this program. While parents are often overburdened during this time with numerous responsibilities, students in high school have suddenly found their busy lives, usually filled with extracurriculars, sports, and college exam preparation, ground to a halt. Many of these students already participated in other volunteer tutor programs as well, and we realized that these students had the potential to serve as a hugely beneficial resource to families during this time. Our initiative, we concluded, would be simple: Highly capable high school students would be matched with younger children to serve as tutors and mentors. We began to publicize our organization, and we found the demand for free tutoring to be immense. Nearly 150 parents swiftly enrolled their children in our programs, and after just a few sessions, reached out to us to express their sincere gratitude for the extra help our tutors provided. We received sponsorships from the Moise Safra Center and partnered with the Israeli organization Me’ever, both of whom were eager to support an organization committed to allowing the academic growth of students to continue during this time. 

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We have tutors available to assist in every subject, including math, Tanakh, Hebrew, history, college-exam preparation, and much more. We also offer classes in baking, kickboxing, coding and numerous other exciting categories, all available to those with little to no prior experience. Our mission has evolved since our inception, and we no longer aim to simply help students continue with their studies. Rather, we hope to help them have fun, learn, and grow, all with the guidance of a friendly high school student. Adopt a Neighbor is here to serve anyone who is in need of our services, and ensure that students have fun activities available, can expand their interests, and are able to prosper and feel confident in school.