Caldera’s youth arts program provides consistent, year-round, long-term (age 11 to young adult) arts education and mentoring to underserved Oregon students from diverse backgrounds. Our objectives are to help students awaken to their innate creativity, develop a broader worldview, negotiate conflict, develop self-confidence, build life skills, and formulate ideas for higher education and career paths.

Caldera bases its activities on Oregon’s Arts Education Standards and proven Positive Youth Development principles. We employ experienced, highly-qualified professional artists and mentors, and we follow a research-based, age-appropriate progression of activities.

Caldera is proud to report that 85 % of their 12th graders graduate or attain their high school equivalency diplomas. This is a huge accomplishment since the average graduation rates in the school districts we work within is only 60 %.

Photo: Caldera student 2010

Friends of Children- King County Chapter

Friends of Children – Klamath Falls

Caldera

Portland Youthbuilders

Open Meadow

Mt. Scott Community School

Rainier Scholars

Camp Fire Columbia’s Xploregon

Kids Unlimited

Marathon Education Partners

Passages NW

Photo: Courtesy of Friends of the Children Portland

Established in 1990, “I Have a Dream” Foundation – Oregon’s mission is to help low-income children succeed in school and college. The organization’s unique, long-term approach to fostering academic success is based on research driven strategies that have resulted in doubling or better high school graduation rates for our 600 past student “Dreamers.”  Building on their past success with adopting single grade levels, “I Have a Dream” has significantly expanded its impact through adopting an entire school via its new Dreamer School model, the first of its kind in the nation. This unique, birth-through-college-completion model is a partnership with Alder Elementary School, the Reynolds School District, and over 20 community partners. 94% of students are eligible for free and reduced lunch, 74% are students of color, and 73% speak English as a second language. Through deep and broad collaboration with partner organizations, the Dreamer School model will provide a comprehensive network of supports, which will give students and their families the resources they need to succeed in school and in college.

Summer Search Seattle has an eight-year track record of success in identifying low-income youth with leadership potential, and enabling them to develop that potential through a uniquely holistic and long-term program model. The five year program includes two scholarship to summer experiential education programs, year-round mentoring, college advising and support during college.

Summer Search Seattle Outcomes 2010:

• 100% of Class of 2010 Summer Search graduated high school.
• 98% of Class of 2010 graduates matriculated directly to college.
• 93% of our Class of 2010 graduates will be first in their families to attend college.
• 94% of alumni are on-track to graduate from college.

The Pangaea Project empowers low-income, high-risk youth to become globally aware leaders through participation in an intensive leadership development program that takes place in Portland, Ecuador and Thailand. Through meaningful interactions with grassroots leaders in Portland and abroad, Pangaea Project participants learn that they can change their own communities and the world, and develop the motivation and the concrete skills to do so effectively.

I have learned that this world and this life is so much bigger than I gave it credit for.  I learned that every negative decision I have made, has in some way or another, brought me here. To a country that most people will never see. To a place that is so beautiful, full of culture, and life that I will never be able to fully describe it. I learned that I am strong. I learned that I have a voice and that I have things worth saying.

– Deavon, 2010 Pangaea Project participant

The Silver Family Foundation provides grant funds to Friends of the Children. Friends of the Children – Portland is an innovative mentoring program that provides our community’s most vulnerable children with an opportunity to realize their individual potential and inherent worth. Working with partnering schools, Friends selects kindergarten children living in disadvantaged circumstances who are displaying issues of concern in the classroom. Then they are paired with paid, professional mentors (called Friends) for 12 ½ years, through their high school graduation.

De La Salle North has a goal of helping low-income, at-risk children in north Portland manage their lives more successfully by providing a comprehensive college preparatory education. One of the key ways that De La Salle North accomplishes this goal is through a Corporate Internship Program. Students work at a local business or nonprofit organization one day a week and their “income” helps pay for their education. The work experience, combined with community involvement, teaches life skills that help students achieve well beyond the classroom.