A New Era Against COVID-19
In face of the spreading Covid-19, schools in the US announced forced shutdowns to protect students and their families from March of 2020. Students are unable to pursue a proper and quality education with difficulties at home from distractions to the complications of the internet. Many extracurricular activities have been put on hold during this time as well. Realizing these challenges, New Era Culture and Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization aimed at supporting children in education, has created multiple free online learning programs through the video meeting platform Zoom.
With the help of NECEF partner, Emily Lu, who is a William Fremd High School senior, created a free online tutoring program for all children across the United States and Canada from grades Kindergarten to 7th grade. NECEF currently hosts over 50 private math and English sessions where high school volunteers lead sessions to tutor these students.
When describing the online tutoring program, Emily explains, "As a student myself, I know that we are struggling to learn required math and English topics without being in a classroom environment. I hope that by providing these one-on-one tutoring sessions, we are able to reach out and directly support students who need additional assistance in understanding these topics from kindergarten through high school."
Extracurricular Activities
In order to further provide hands-on extracurricular activities that are put on hold during this time, NECEF also led a month-long online STEM summer camp to explore science, math, technological, and engineering concepts. From balloon cars to lava lamps, we created a competitive and intriguing environment where over 100 students used common household materials to create challenges and daily projects right at home. Students had to solve various challenges, such as moving a car the farthest, with prizes as incentives. We created over 30 projects during the camp that taught students various science principles, such as Newton's Laws. In addition, NECEF sent students the necessary materials for our camps in order to ensure the program ran as smoothly as possible.
While the STEM summer camp has ended, Emily, with the help of her NECEF partner, continues to share her love in science in another program called, New Era With Science (N.E.W.S.). These online weekly science classes focus on chemical experiments while learning scientific concepts. Scientific principles are consistently tied in with every experiment performed during the classes.
Get Involved
NECEF encourages all people in the community to take part in our mission to continue to provide education to everyone during this unprecedented time. You can help support NECEF by becoming a tutor to use your knowledge to share to students across the nation. You can contact us by email for further details: necef@neweracultureandeducation.org. To find more information about us, you can visit us on our website, neweracultureandeducation.org; Instagram, @neweracultureandeducation; or Facebook page, New Era Culture and Education Foundation.