It all started in March.

In mid-March, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio closed public spaces and schools. The decision to remain open for tutoring was an easy one - there was no question we wanted and needed to keep operations going. In fact, the shuttering of schools made our mission ever more pressing and urgent. Educators anticipated that students without in-person instruction would fall further behind.

C/D took action.

C/D staff quickly pivoted to develop a digital version of its math curriculum. Within two weeks, C/D migrated from in-person tutoring to a virtual program. C/D staff recreated digital versions of printed math exercises, retrained its 180 volunteer tutors, and redesigned weekly progress evaluation. C/D also trained nearly 200 parents on securely accessing the new digital curriculum module. The first virtual tutoring session went live on March 28th.

C/D experienced a massive expression of support across our student and volunteer communities. Our staff held make-up tutoring sessions during the city’s spring break recess. Alumni re-joined from across the country. At the time of the mayor’s announcement that city-sponsored summer camps would be shuttered, C/D had already begun the process of planning its first summer tutoring program. C/D will hold July and August math tutoring sessions to keep students’ math skills intact.

C/D now serves as an increasingly important source of personalized education to ensure middle school students are not falling behind on math fundamentals.

We support our communities beyond just math.

During one tutoring session, a quiet 11-year-old C/D student asked if she could redeem her math work points for vegetables. It had been hard for her family to get fresh food since the quarantine began. As unemployment rates skyrocketed across the city, our neediest families, particularly those who were raising families on incomes below or near the federal poverty line and depend on NYC public schools for free meals, were experiencing food insecurities sparked by the pandemic.

This child, one of C/D’s very own students, needed help.

A longtime friend of the organization created a fund to deliver fresh groceries to C/D’s neediest families. In the first four days of the fundraising campaign, donors gave more than $4,000. Volunteers have since dedicated more than 40 hours to coordinating the logistics of shopping and safely delivering food items to our families. True to C/D roots, the campaign is a volunteer-led, volunteer-funded, and volunteer-executed initiative.