About New Orleans Outreach

Mission

The mission of New Orleans Outreach is to improve the quality of public education at our partner schools. We do this by linking volunteers and community resources through programs that respond to the needs of each school. New Orleans Outreach gives public school students access to meaningful experiences that increase academic success, develop skills, and inspire them to participate fully in community life. Outreach recruits, trains, and places teachers, artists and volunteers in the classroom during the school day, after school, and in the summer.

Outreach brings community resources into public schools

Many motivated community members want to get involved in public education but often don’t know how or where to begin.  New Orleans Outreach helps by getting to know a potential volunteer’s interests, passions, and skills, then determines how that volunteer can best use his or her skills to benefit students at a particular school.

Similarly, Outreach works with partner schools’ principals and teachers to determine what each school needs most, then finds those resources.  If a school needs tutors, we recruit them, train them, and place them at school sites.  If a school needs teachers for an afterschool program, we find that talent, hire them, and make sure they are a good fit for the particular school’s culture and community.  We also provide professional development to make sure those tutors, artists, volunteers, and other paid professionals have the classroom management skills and knowledge of best practices they need to succeed.

Utilizing a diverse pool of talented, committed individuals and partner organizations, Outreach delivers an extraordinary array of services that help its partner schools help their students succeed.  Today, Outreach provides services in seven open-admission public charter schools.

How We Work

New Orleans Outreach places a full-time, highly qualified Outreach Program Manager at each school site. The Manager works with principals, parents, teachers, and students to identify the needs and improvement goals of each particular school and then utilizes community resources to create programs in response to those needs.

New Orleans Outreach:

• Creates daytime and afterschool academic and cultural enrichment classes
• Trains and places teaching assistances and tutors (both paid and volunteer)
• Develops special programs such as Power Ties career awareness programs, Healthy Habits workshops, and leadership clubs
• Coordinates volunteers for special projects, like school beautification
• Cultivates school partners who bring resources, both human and material, to schools