Growing up in poverty is one of the most significant threats to healthy child development. Under-privileged kids are often deprived of opportunities and strategies that can enable them to live to their full potential. Strategic Kids Fund teaches STEM based programming through games, so every child can build critical life skills that will positively impact their future in school, their career, health, and life-long interactions. The Fund was established by Adam Brody, the founder of our parent organization Strategic Kids and owner of Academic Chess. Growing up in the foster system, Adam became highly aware of the impact of positive mentorship and opportunities in creating a bright future. Through after-school programs Adam was able to provide scholarships out of his own pocket to kids who wanted to attend, but could not afford it. As his scholarship program grew so did his awareness of how enormous the problem was. Thousands of kids were being left behind! To create a long -term sustainable solution Strategic Kids Fund was formed in 2016 as a fiscally sponsored project of OneOC. We offer full and partial after-school scholarships to low-income students in grades K-6th in our target communities in Orange County, Denver, and Seattle. Our programs are offered both on school campus to reduce the financial hardship of commuting for low-income families and at our conveniently located facilities.

Thanks to our recent partnership with Mentors Foundation Strategic Kids Fund has been able to grow to meet the needs of our new communities. Strategic improvements have enabled better donor and parent interface through website improvements. We have also been able to send our key grant writer, Rachael, to a three week-long grant writing seminar and a local grant networking program. Our most exciting development, thanks to Mentors, has been the development of Strategic Kids Fund in Ukraine – now making us a global non-profit! Over the next several months our staff in Ukraine will be in training to teach our LEGO programming at orphanages. Thanks to Mentors all startup materials costs are covered so they can run camps for years to come!