Create Success

Create Success is the only multi-service educational program of its kind in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Our afterschool and summer programs are a model of academic success with intense tutoring and individualized homework assistance. Our personal touch Mentoring, family mediation, counseling and advocacy, recreational activities including sports and the performing arts round out this program. Our goals are:

    • To close the academic skills gap;
    • To displace the poverty mentality;
    • To provide the support and resources needed to help each child and youth complete their education and enter the workplace;
    • To address the social issues that discourage and hinder a child from focusing on their education

Create Success evaluates student performance by using NYC Department of Education assessment tools. Our evaluation measures show that every summer of over the past seven years:

    • 95% of the students tested improved several DRA levels;
    • 20% increased an entire grade level;
    • All students expressed they felt more comfortable reading, more confident in their math skills, and had a positive outlook towards their educational success

 

Children of the City is pleased to announce that a new afterschool site was launched at one of the area schools. “We are enormously pleased at what this means for disadvantaged children, who struggle with homework because their parents don’t speak English or cannot read and write,” shared Joyce Mattera, the founder and Executive Director of Children of the City.

New York City, one of the most important opportunistic cities, is now, ironically, the nation’s ‘Dropout City’. From 1986 to June 2004, there has been a confounding 350,000 students who have dropped out of school in NYC (Campanile, NY Post). The numbers are no less frightening as you focus on specific boroughs in the tri-state area. Sunset Park has a 48% dropout rate. This is almost double Manhattan’s 28% (NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene). The most important factor for this percentage gap is poverty; disadvantaged children are at risk for failing school at any grade.

The Create Success program works! It is our multi-service afterschool and summer program, the only one of its kind in Sunset Park and the immediate surrounding communities. Students are not only engaged in intense academic tutoring and daily homework help, but also receive counseling, advocacy in social systems (school and court), group and individual mentoring, family mediation, and recreational activities, and more. Create Success provides the much-needed academic, emotional and social support to aid these children in finishing their education.

We are very excited about our current outcomes. Reports from the 2013 session show noteworthy improvements in reading comprehension and math skills. Click here to view outcomes for the summer 2016 program.

Click here for an archive of our Create Success Outcome Reports.