Jumpstart

MISSION: To work toward the day when every child in America enters school prepared to succeed. DESCRIPTION: Jumpstart was founded in 1993 at Yale University at the intersection of two national trends: the public need for quality early childhood programs and the emerging national service movement recruiting thousands of college students to community service. During the first year of the program, 15 college students worked one-to-one with 15 preschoolers at New Haven Head Start. At Jumpstart, the goal is to build literacy, language, social, and initiative skills in young children. This is done by pairing motivated college students, called Corps members, with pre-school children in caring and supportive one-to-one relationships for an entire school year. The program model focuses on school success, family involvement and building future teachers who care about the success of building strong educations for children. IMPACT: Jumpstart faces challenges surrounding early childhood education: 35 percent of American kindergarten children arrive at school unprepared to learn. Fifty percent of all children from low-income families start first grade up to two years behind their peers in preschool skills. Five-year-olds from low-income communities have one-fourth the vocabulary of their mid-income peers. During the 2007-2008 school year, Jumpstart engaged 3,500 Corps members, connected with more than 13,000 preschoolers, partnered with over 300 Head Start and other early learning centers, operated in 20 states in partnership with nearly 70 colleges and universities across the country, helped to grow the number of college students engaged by nearly 500 and the number of children served by nearly 1,500.