Tutoring Beyond Borders has been serving Kitchener-Waterloo since 2010 and has gained a solid reputation as a respectable tutoring service. Although we wish we can help every student out there, our services are limited to Gr. 9-12 students in the Ontario Curriculum who are not only in need of academic help, but are also unable to afford paid tutoring alternatives.
Throughout the years, we have left quite an impact on our local community, and we make it our daily mission to keep offering our services and make a difference in our students’ lives. Learn more about how we impact Kitchener-Waterloo by viewing our main impact categories below.
PROVIDE ACADEMIC HELP
TBB’s main goal is to provide free tutoring services to students who are unable to afford regular paid services and struggling with course content. As a result, each of our tutors try their best to help their student understand difficult concepts more clearly and prepare them for upcoming tests and exams.
But why choose TBB’s tutoring services in the first place? Well, we’re the only charity out there that provides tailored, one-on-one lessons for each of our students. We do not have group tutoring sessions, but instead dedicate one volunteer tutor to one student, where they can work together and try to improve the student’s understanding of course content and try to improve the student’s grades as well.
Although we do not guarantee any student’s success, student feedback surveys have allowed us to estimate an increase in grades upwards of 10% depending on the field of study.
ALLEVIATE FINANCIAL BURDENS OF TUTORING
Tutoring can be extremely expensive and not all families can afford it. There is a very lucrative market in tutoring, and whether you pay $20-25/hour for a first-year university student or $100/hour for a professional tutor with multiple degrees, the costs really add up in the end.
Let’s assume that we have one high school student who needs one hour a week of tutoring because he/she has no other options to seek for academic help (teacher has no extra time to help, study groups do not seem to help, peer tutoring isn’t an option due to embarrassment from friends/classmates, etc.). The logical conclusion for all families would be to hire a tutor for their child.
If we think about it…one hour a week of tutoring will incur an expense of at least $25 x 4 weeks = $100/month for a family. That’s a minimum of $1,200 per year for that family’s child. Although this may not seem like much to some people, that isn’t the case for others. What if the family simply couldn’t afford the extra costs? What if that family had more than one child who needed tutoring? What if the child needed 2 hours per week instead? What if the one child needed help in two subjects and needed two tutors? The possibilities are endless, because every family is different. For those families that cannot afford tutoring for their child, for whichever reason they have, Tutoring Beyond Borders is here to help.
At TBB, we are proud of the services we provide, and our volunteer tutors have donated tens of thousands of hours helping these students. Since 2010, we have successfully offered an estimated $2.8 million worth of tutoring services to Kitchener-Waterloo. That’s a lot of money saved for all of these families!
PROMOTE YOUTH ENGAGEMENT
Our whole charity is based on the foundation that young adults (university and college students) help the next generation of youth (high school students). As a result, we are wholly focused on youth engagement, leadership and empowerment.
Our youth are the leaders of tomorrow, and it’s important that we all share a sense of community support. Our volunteers come from all walks of life and from countries all over the world, and they are passionate about helping students in our local Kitchener-Waterloo community.
When students are matched up with their tutors, our hope is that our tutors can act as mentors and role models to the younger generation and encourage them to help others in the future as well, no matter where they end up.
Since 2010, we have had over 400 tutors on our roster and have helped almost 1,000 local students on a regular basis. Since our private tutoring lessons can last for months between a tutor and student, sometimes years, our engagement of almost 1,500 youth in academic activities is something we are very proud of. Even more impressive is the fact that some of our students become our tutors once they enter university!
PROVIDE MENTORSHIP ON HIGH SCHOOL TO UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE TRANSITIONS
All of our tutors are university/college students or graduates. As a result, they’re quite familiar with so-called “college life” and the change of pace when it comes to post-secondary education. When students are paired up with our tutors, they can benefit from our tutors’ experiences.
From student feedback surveys, one of the key points they mention is that their tutors were friendly and highly knowledgeable about university or college life. In addition, due to the small age gap between students and tutors, they felt more comfortable asking their tutors questions about university/college applications, classroom sizes/styles, different programs, and more.
As a result, it is obvious that our tutors do more than just teach; they’re mentors for our students as well.
SUPPORT IMMIGRANTS
It’s tough coming to a new country to start a new chapter of your life. At TBB, we understand the difficulties facing immigrant families, and we try our best to help those that cannot afford paid tutoring services as well.
Although we only offer our tutoring services through the English language, we sometimes do find a tutor who can speak both their native tongue and English. These cases do happen sometimes, and TBB is very proud of the strong variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds our tutors come from.
In terms of students, there are a staggering portion of them who are part of immigrant families. In fact, at least 25% of our students are children of immigrants, or immigrants themselves. As a result, a significant portion of our volunteer resources go towards supporting immigrant families.