Leadership Education and Athletics in Partnership

Leap is a free year-round after-school and summer camp mentoring program that provides academic, athletic, and social enrichments for new haven youth, all free of charge. Leap is structured in a multi-level mentoring fashion divided into three tiers: a children's program (ages 7-12), a leaders in training (lit) program (ages 13-15), and a youth development program (ages 16-23). Leap is new haven's largest employer of teenagers with well over 200 young people working for leap each year. By employing youth and providing them with the resources they need to thrive, leap actively serves new haven's at-risk youth population. Over 1000 children ages 7-12 attend leap after school monday -thursday (with saturday programming available as well) per year. Taught and mentored by high school and college student counselors, children receive homework help as well as instruction through a literacy-based curriculum. in addition, the children participate in a variety of enrichment "resources" such as swimming, computer Education and coding, healthy cooking, dance, tennis, gardening, painting and chess. Youth ages 13-15 are enrolled in our leaders in training (lit) program. in addition to providing tutoring and homework help, this program is geared toward providing workshops designed to foster social, emotional, and physical growth. Lits also participate in resources geared toward teaching life skills such as cooking, swimming, theater and dance. Lits implement a community service project each semester in order to develop organizational skills and foster a mindset of community betterment. Lastly, in line with leap's mentoring model, lits are tasked with mentoring and teaching younger children under supervision of older counselors. Our youth development program is for high school and college students ages 16-24 who serve as our junior and senior counselors. These students are employed to mentor and teach younger children. Counselors at leap learn the skills that make them career-ready while simultaneously learning how to be effective mentors and educators. These students participate in a variety of professional development workshops including resume writing, interview skills, financial management, mental health, substance abuse prevention, public speaking and effective communication.