East Side Heart & Home Family Center offers a variety of alternative education programs, including an annual summer youth program, tuition assistance, and educational field trips.
The summer youth program looks a little bit different every year, but usually consists of both educational and recreational components. Most recently, the Family Center has been running its Friday Club program, bringing neighborhood kids together to play games and build community. The program helps kids feel welcome at the Family Center and gives them something engaging to do during the day. In 2015, we hosted a week-long STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) summer camp. Students participated in hands-on projects and activities focused on ideas ranging from the weather to magnets to animals to colors. In 2016, students participated in a live production of the musical “The Saga of Dead Dog Gulah.” They worked together as a team to design and paint the set, to learn the songs, and to act it out for an audience! The 2017 summer program was very special for the Family Center because a former summer program participant who is now pursuing a bachelors degree in physics came back to work with the current children in our program! Everyone learned SO much and had such a wonderful time!
The Family Center also provides significant tuition support for participants of our Family Program to attend a variety of private schools in St. Louis and the Metro East. In 2017, we launched Changing the World Through Education, a scholarship fundraising campaign to help us offset the cost of tuition, one of our largest expenses each year. Check out the brochure HERE!
Because we believe that a quality education happens both inside and outside a classroom, the Family Center organizes and sponsors many different educational field trips throughout the year. Past trips have included the St. Louis Zoo, the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, Saint Louis University’s Flight School facility, weekend camping adventures, horseback riding, and more!
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.
Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
– The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.