The Academy Project is a 501(c)(3) organization based in Los Angeles, focused on improving educational and life outcomes for foster, homeless, and at-risk youth in South Los Angeles, through community, empowerment, and education. Through TAP's programming, foster and homeless youth have access to mentor relationships, tutoring services, a peer community, extracurricular activities, and a holistic plan to address their individual needs. Beyond that, TAP offers foster youth a place to belong, where they are secure in the knowledge that they are safe and always welcome.
There are 35,000 foster youth in the COUNTY of Los Angeles. There are 28,000 foster youth in the STATE of New York. The systems set up to support foster youth in LA are overwhelmed and failing.
The Academy Project was created as a direct response to the dismal outcomes facing foster youth in Los Angeles today. According to The Children’s Bureau Child Welfare Information Gateway:
- Within the first 2 to 4 years after aging out of the foster care system, 50% of foster youth will be homeless or in prison.
- Only 58% of foster youth achieve a High School Diploma (compared to 84% of the general population) and only 4% received any higher education.
- Only 1.8% of former foster youth complete a bachelor’s degree (compared to 34% of the general population).
- The average number of schools a foster youth attends while in foster care is 7. Four to six months of progress is lost with every school change.
- Girls in foster care are 2.5 times more likely to become pregnant by age 19 than those not in care.
- 70% of California prison inmates have spent time in foster care.
OUR PROGRAMS
Camp Xavier
The second week of July, 40 foster youth attend five days of day-camp on The University of Southern California’s campus where they are introduced to a range of activities developed to build trust and community, and to help them identify their own specific interests, something that circumstance may not have allowed until now. By introducing our campers to a college campus and college culture early in their education, the seed of attending college in the future is planted. For the oldest campers, camp culminates in a seven day sleep-away trip in the San Bernardino mountains, delivered in partnership with UCLA Unicamp. Unicamp has been working with urban LA youth since 1928. Unicamp has exceptional facilities and, as all of their camp counsellors are UCLA students, the idea that a college education is within our Members’ reach is reinforced.
The Co-Op
Held in South Los Angeles, The Co-Op After School Program is held 3 days weekly from dismissal to 6 p.m. at Mann UCLA Community School in South Los Angeles. A stable community of adult volunteer mentors surrounds youth with tutoring, therapeutic services, and access to extracurricular activities. Programming is free to youth and to the school.. The Co-Op participants benefit from social and emotional learning (SEL) activities offered through Love4Life. Art education is offered by the Harmony Project (a nonprofit provider of tuition-free music education and social support) and Reading Partners (providing reading remediation and mentoring).
HOME/SCHOOL
The Academy Project’s newest program, HOME/SCHOOL, is a full-time, in-school advocacy program for all foster youth students attending Mann UCLA Community School. HOME/SCHOOL provides a full-time trauma-informed adult advocate, weekly talk sessions, academic support, and the complete oversight and coordination of the different variables of a youth’s life, The addition of Home/School to TAP’s catalog of programs will bring the holistic, full-time advocacy component needed to give foster youth the full level of support that they need to thrive.
