Thank You for Supporting Us Through 2020!

2020 began as the start of a new decade, with the aspirations and dreams of what this year could bring. It quickly became a year of global and U.S. pandemic, civil protests and unrest, closures of schools and businesses, the most massive unemployment we have ever experienced, disruption of normal daily life, and one of the most stressful presidential elections of our history. In this environment, Lincoln Heights Tutorial Program (LHTP) continued to build on our mission.

At the LHTP, the challenge was to transform our services to become virtual, and seek new ways to serve our amazing community. Our tutoring program transitioned to safely serving our children through Skype and Zoom. Our youth clubs continued to meet on Zoom to ensure our youth have a healthy place to to continue to connect and build relationships. Our parking lot and front curbside hosted 5 Food banks, 4 of which were hosted with our FCBC partners that included our school supply giveaways. We also assisted with 2 others hosted by our City. Through our 5 food banks, we gave 1,700 bags of groceries out to our community members, and 675 school supply and backpacks to children. One of those food pantry and school supply giveaways was prepared and distributed by the teens of our “Increase the Peace” youth advocacy committee and Support teams. We held a Christmas toy giveaway, held regular Zoom meetings, virtual college tours, and AMA information sessions for our youth clubs.

We look back at the challenges of 2020 and know that we could not have done this without the support of our friends, partners, and donors that continue to give back to LHTP and this community. More than ever, your community needs your support.

We hope 2021 will be a year of restoration of our pre-COVID ways of life. For us, we look forward to seeing children and our teens back on site and in person, not just in virtual. We also look forward to getting back to all the community service events we normally do every year, and get back to the deeper influence and leadership development that comes from our face to face and live group interactions. Until then, we’ll continue to innovate and continue to strengthen this community however we can.

There is light at the end of the tunnel; we hope you will continue with us there and continue to support our great community. We wish everyone the best of health and safety in 2021- great times are ahead!

More important than ever before

The ongoing pandemic makes our mission to support the underserved children of our community more important than ever before. Technology and computer fluency gaps are creating wider opportunity gaps and greater risks of falling behind.

Our effort to digitize our core programs includes continuing to deliver free and effective tutoring services to the community. We are a month into our summer program with 8 tutors providing tutoring virtually to children from our facilities. We provide a safe space for tutors to work in individual rooms following CDC guidelines.

The most obvious challenge for many families is the limited household technology to support remote education. Many of our children are working on outdated computers, shared computers, or even phones. Even in households with technology available, limited adult computer fluency makes setup and troubleshooting even more difficult.

Like all organizations, this has been a learning process for us as well. As an organization that hires teens from our community, no one understands the challenges of the families better than our tutors. With support of our tutors, we have learned to work with these challenges to best serve the community. We are proud of what our team of tutors has been able to do for the program this summer.

Like most non-profit organizations, this has been a challenging year to raise funding. Meanwhile we've made investments in technology to continue delivering on our mission. To help us continue to deliver quality support to the underserved, please consider making a donation to LHTP today.

2020 LHTP Scholarship Recipient - "It was my home away from home"

We are pleased to share that our 2020 LHTP Scholarship recipient is high school graduate Sally Voong. Sally’s been with our YUCA program since her freshman year in high school and graduated as YUCA President Co-Chair. From here, she’ll be attending UC Davis to study business. We expect great things from Sally and know she will make us proud. We asked Sally to share a few words about her time with YUCA and LHTP, here’s what she had to say:

“Like many, I initially joined YUCA in my freshmen year with the goal of earning enough service hours to satisfy my high school requirements. Little did I know, it would make a big impact on my life and shape me into the person I am today.

Soon after attending a few service events, I really fell in love with the idea of helping my community and serving the people. I built strong friendships with a lot of people who were from different backgrounds and schools I would’ve never imagined to become friends with, if not for YUCA.

Throughout the years, I was inspired by watching leaders of YUCA that came before me, and gained confidence to become a similar figure for others. I was super excited to have been a part of the committee team in “Increase the Peace” in junior year. It was a stepping stone because it introduced and molded my beginner leadership skills. In my senior year, to my surprise, I ran for President Co-Chair in “YUCA Cabinet.” At first, I was really hesitant to run for President Co-Chair, never in a million years would I have thought I would be brave enough to take on such a position. But I am so thankful for Dennis & Trinh who encouraged and supported me to take on this role. I grew to be more confident in my decision making and found my passion for working with other people. This played a big part when it came to deciding my major of choice, business.

Looking back on the past 4 years, I have met and worked with such amazing people, and I can confidently say that there was never a bad moment with YUCA since the day I stepped into my first meeting. I was exposed to environments forcing myself out of my comfort zone, and the opportunities I grasped allowed for me to gain and strengthen skills such as communication, leadership, teamwork, listening, resolving conflict, etc. I had not realized this until my senior year, but YUCA has always been a stable support system through my high school career. It was a place where I felt comfortable and sought guidance whenever I needed it.

YUCA will always have a special place in my heart as it was my home away from home.”