Natick July 2016

July 2016 Local Town Pages www.naticktownnews.com Page 7
Kids Connect Embraces Natick’s Youth
By Via Perkins,
Contributing Writer
Out of a heart for sttruggling
youth, Natick nonprofit Kids Connect
grew from supporting underserved
middle school students to
an in-demand tutoring and dropin
center for students, kindergarten
through high school. Through
personalized attention in a caring
and safe environment, Kids
Connect has been providing the
support some Natick youth have
desperately needed.
A Heart for the Young
Founder and Executive Director
Debra Sayre has a heartfelt history
with local students that began
in 2000. “I noticed that there were
not a lot of unstructured programs
for kids in Natick,” Sayre remembered.
“It turned out that middle
school kids could use a drop-in
center. My background was social
work, so getting kids a safe place
was a priority.”
At this time, there were a number
of troubled younger teens in
the community. They did not go
unnoticed by Sayre, and she was
determined to come up with a
way to help them. “Those were
my kids, young people that were
often bright, but were lost, or had
some adolescent issues and needed
a refuge,” she said.
Sayre was awarded a grant
from the Natick Police Department
to start a tutoring program
for middle school students. She
set up Kids Connect at its current
location in downtown Natick, 43
Main St. She also set up a dropin
center, since it was equally important
to her to provide a relaxed
setting for teens. For the next five
years, the students came to be tutored,
have a snack, play a game
or spend time with Sayre and
other teens.
Due to continual requests to
expand the program, Kids Connect
began offering tutoring for
students from first grade through
high school in a variety of subjects,
and expanded their space to a few
rooms in their building on Main
Street There are now nine semiprivate
stations equipped with a
desk and supplies where tutors can
meet one-on-one with a student.
Meeting Needs Effectively
Sayre’s mission is to serve the
students in the greatest need,
whose families may not normally
be able to afford tutoring. Parents
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A tutor helps a student with
math at the downtown Natick
tutoring and drop-in center.
(Photo/Debra Sayre)
pay for Kids Connect services
on a sliding scale, which enables
around 80 students to be tutored
every week during the academic
year.
“I am as concerned with the
effects of a child failing in school,
because when a kid is struggling
and doesn’t know something, they
assume it’s a defect of their own,”
Sayre said. Kids Connect works to
bolster not only students’ knowledge
and skill sets, but their selfesteem
as well.
Thus, the ways in which tutors
offer academic assistance at Kids
Connect are just as important as
the assistance itself. “This program
is structured such that all the tutors
are hired as much for their
warmth and creativity as for their
teaching skills, because it’s about
having a child feel that they can
learn and are supported,” Sayre
said.
Though Kids Connect is less
active once school closes, they remain
open for a majority of the
summer, only shutting down between
late June and July 4. They
make a point to be as flexible as
possible, so that if a student has hit
a rough patch at any point during
the year, their family can make arrangements
for them.
Success Stories
One of the greatest strengths
of Kids Connect is their ability to
meet students where they are. For
some students, the center provides
instruction and guidance, and for
others, the facility simply serves as
a place to relax and decompress,
without fear of judgment or evaluation.
This attitude is exemplified in
one story Sayre related about an
international student with an atypical
dilemma at the Walnut Hill
School, a Natick boarding school
for the arts. “They once had a
student who had just arrived from
China,” Sayre recalled. “We took
the student on and taught him
conversational English.”
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Students study and talk at Kids Connect. (Photo/Debra Sayre)
His goal was to have an admissions
interview with the Walnut
Hill School so he could be admitted
as a piano student. In just a
matter of weeks, he was able to
learn enough English to have his
interview and be admitted as a
student.
“I have seen so many mini-miracles
here that, on paper, might
not have been possible,” Sayre
said. “We’ve been lucky enough
to run into enough ex-students to
know that teaching them to learn
works, because they will drop in
and tell us how they are doing in
college, or what kind of a job they
got.”
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Methods of Support
As a community-supported effort,
Kids Connect is able to serve
Natick students with a combination
of individual and corporate
donations. Since they opened their
doors 16 years ago, their budget
has only increased from $90,000
to $125,000, which mostly reflects
an increase in more tutors to meet
student demands.
There are multiple ways to
donate to Kids Connect. For residents
that attend the Natick Farmers’
Market at Natick Common on
Saturdays, buying coffee and juice
boxes from Sayre will support
the nonprofit. Mabardy’s Gulf, a
gas station and auto service at 36
South Main St., accepts bottle and
can donations on their behalf.
For other ways to donate, and
to learn more about Kids Connect,
visit www.kids-connect.org.