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On April 18, 30,000 runners will begin at the starting line in Hopkinton ready to complete the 120th Boston Marathon. Joining those athletes is Kirsten Boger of Westwood, who is part of Team Summer Learning, a group of runners raising money to support campers at both Hale Reservation and Courageous Sailing.
Team Summer Learning helps to give underserved children access to life-changing learning opportunities.
Hale and Courageous Sailing are part of the Summer Learning Project, a partnership of local non-profits that work to mitigate summer learning loss in urban youth. The achievement gap between low-income students and their higher-income peers is explained largely by unequal access to learning opportunities beyond the school day.
Students who don’t participate in learning programs during the summer lose substantial knowledge and skills gained during the school year. This “summer learning slide” most adversely affects low-income students, is cumulative across a young person’s lifetime, and represents an expensive leak in our educational pipeline. Mounting evidence suggests that quality summer programs can stem this loss and, in some cases, even accelerate students’ progress.
As an official Boston Athletic Association charity, Team Summer Learning is raising funds to make these opportunities available to children who could not otherwise afford a summer spent in the woods at camp or on sailboat.
Kirsten Boger is running because she believes that every child deserves the right to educational opportunities and understands the impact this will have on so many young lives.
"As a part of Team Summer Learning, I feel such a sense of accomplishment knowing that I have played a role in providing children with what will inevitably be amazing summer experiences," Boger said.
To support Kirsten and her team, visit https://www.crowdrise.com/HaleReservationBoston2016.
Courageous Sailing teaches sailing and more to over 1,000 kids each year. The mission of Courageous is to transform lives through sailing programs that inspire learning, personal growth and leadership.
Since 2012, Courageous has been striving to engage and meet the needs of youth from Boston’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods with programs intentionally designed to mitigate summer learning loss and remove barriers to involvement.
