Media & Resources

It was Vicki Olivares’ third year in college at Cal State Dominguez Hills when a counselor asked if she was looking for a summer job working with kids. She said yes, thinking it would be an easy job watching children play. But she quickly realized it was so much more. “Little did I know that it wasn’t just a job, it was a movement and that it would shape my entire philosophy of teaching,” she said. That was 15 years ago. Since then, Olivares has been a Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program servant leader intern, teaching various levels of scholars over multiple summers and is now site coordinator for the Long Beach program site, hosted by Success in Challenges. Olivares is also a first grade teacher for Los Angeles Unified School District. Much of her successes as a teacher she [...]

In California each year, more than 1,200 scholars participate in Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools®, a six-week summer literacy and cultural enrichment program. Many of these children attend sites in the Sacramento area hosted by Roberts Family Development Center. The summer of 2019 marked the sixth year Roberts Family Development Center and its founders, Derrell and Tina Roberts, have partnered with Children’s Defense Fund-California (CDF-CA) to run the program. Enrollment has grown from 160 students in the first year to almost 900 in 2018. In 2019, they had six sites serving 640 youth in first through eighth grades from three Sacramento area school districts. Funding the program was a challenge in the beginning, said Derrell Roberts. But securing support got much easier after realizing improved reading scores, increased parent engagement, and positive ethnic identity benefits that are challenging for many districts. [...]

When Antoinette MaGee was pregnant she remembers hearing about the Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® program. And once she learned more about it, and visited a site, she was sold. “I knew I wanted my baby to be in the program,” she said. “I used to say ‘Please, Paula just stay around long enough so that I can put my baby in the program.” MaGee is referring to longtime CDF Freedom Schools partner Paula Woods. She and her husband, Leon, run Success in Challenges, a social service nonprofit organization in Long Beach. MaGee was working with the Woods on some of their other programs. Almost six years later, MaGee got her wish. Her 5-year-old daughter, Katelynn, is a CDF Freedom Schools scholar at the Success in Challenges site and it would be an understatement to say that Katelynn likes the program. [...]

Alfreca Howard and her son, Ausar In college, Alfreca Howard’s major was Africana Studies. Since then she has fully embraced her culture and does everything she can to make sure her 11-year-old son, Ausar, knows and understands Black history. So when she came across a literacy and cultural enrichment program that kept the legacy of civil rights leader and human rights activist Ella Baker alive, she knew her son had to be a part of it. “Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools® reinforces the values and cultural foundation that I have instilled in my son,” Howard said. “We are in alignment and it feels so good. We are speaking a common language.” For Howard, the CDF Freedom Schools climate is much needed to contrast the very different experiences children get in public schools, where often Black and Brown youth are set up [...]