Disadvantaged children around Milwaukee are looking for a role model, and the solution to their dilemma is Kids 4 Kids. Kids 4 Kids is a program that brings a suburban mentor in touch with a city student to bring prosperity and to build relationships.

According to Kids 4 Kids.org, 55 percent of Milwaukee public school students will not graduate from high school, and 12 percent will not be able to read at their grade level. The big goal is to motivate children to finish high school and get a college degree.

Every Monday after school from 3 to 5 p.m., a provided bus drives Homestead students from the aquatic entrance to Milwaukee College Prep, where they get assigned a student from kindergarten to fifth grade. The Homestead students then tutor and talk with their assigned students to impact their lives.

Chandlar Strauss, president of Kids 4 Kids, stated,  “We are looking for students who can motivate the kids they are tutoring to strive for excellence and want to provide them with some type of consistency in their life and be someone they can look up to.”

Kids 4 Kids was founded in 2013 by Chandlar Strauss, Homestead senior, and her best friend and club cofounder Danielle Flemming, Whitefish Bay senior, with the goal of setting Milwaukee schools straight. They were so close growing up that when they had to attend different high schools, the girls brainstormed an excuse to hang out together, which ended up being helping kids in need.

Chandlar and her team raised 30 thousand dollars at their first fundraiser in 2014, and with the help of corporate sponsors, they were able to make this program possible.

Such sponsors include KFC, Marcus Investments, Strauss, Milwaukee Admirals, Balyasny Asset Investments, Wolf Peach, Luvar and Co., New Resources Consulting, Rail Hall, The Fleming Family, Brick 3 Pizza and Acid Properties.

Strauss and Flemming recruited 65 volunteers from six different schools to tutor at Milwaukee College Prep every week.

“At first we were just doing it to benefit the kids, but over the last year, after recruiting a bunch of Homestead students, we realized that the high school students were really positively affected and had their perspectives changed when they opened up to an environment that was antithetical to their own,” Strauss said. “We also taught the kids that not all suburban students are bad, even if they grew up in an environment where they are really sheltered and segregated from us.”

Bethany Ford, junior and vice president, stated, “I love watching the kids grow, and it’s hard to believe that transformations can happen in a year. But over the past year, I have watched the kids learn to read and add and subtract things that had once flustered and confused them so much.”

As time goes on, Kids 4 Kids is becoming more successful and noticed by society, changing the paths and laying out success one step at a time for disadvantaged students.  

If you would like to donate, just go to Kids 4 Kids.org, where 50 percent of proceeds will go to Milwaukee College Prep and the other 50 percent will go to Milwaukee public schools.

To sign up, you need to attend an orientation. The next orientation occurs on November 16, and after that, you must come once a week.