College Bound
This project's parent organization is New Heights
It operates in United States
It uses Basketball
Entered the Sport for Education Award
More about College Bound
New Heights uses basketball to tackle a critical social issue: most New York City minority youth do not graduate from high school or go to college. According to the NYC Department of Education, more than 40% of NYC high school students do not graduate from high school; this is one of the lowest high school graduation rates of any large U.S. city.
The problem of low graduation rates is particularly pronounced for Latinos and African-Americans (New Heights’ largest demographic groups). In the neighborhoods we target, only 33% of Latino and 26% of African-American students in public high schools graduate in four years. We turn the basketball court into a classroom, using basketball to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds (and often failing in school) to graduate from high school and matriculate to college. We engage our participants by encouraging them to develop and apply leadership skills.
We challenge them to resolve interpersonal conflicts among teammates, to demonstrate teamwork and dedication in training and competition, and to display respect towards others. Most importantly, New Heights provides student-athletes direct access to resources that low-income students rarely have, including academic tutoring, high school and college preparation and, ultimately, school placements.