Future Kids supports primary school students who receive little or no support at school for their school assignments. This home disadvantage has been proven to affect children throughout their school career. To improve equality of opportunity, Future Kids puts a student or a student aside. This mentor visits the child once a week for 1 1/2 hours at home to help them learn or use independent learning techniques.
The external supporters and / or mentors are students of the Zurich universities:
- University of Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology,
- Zurich University of Teacher Education, Institute of Understrass at the Zurich University of Education
- Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
They support the selected school children for at least one year, but if possible support them for over a period of several years. In return, they receive a financial compensation or ECTS credits.
First experiences during the pilot phase 2010/11 in the Zurich school Allenmoos indicate that the Future Kids offer is highly appreciated by both parents and teachers as well as children. Individualized access and orientation to the specific needs of each pupil prove to be strengths of the project.
Future Kids sees itself as a model project: At the university location in Zurich, it will be tested and shown on a large scale how the school success of children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a suitable extra-curricular support can be markedly improved.
The initiator and organizer of Future Kids is the specialist organization AOZ, an independent public-law institution of the city of Zurich. The project is supported by the Social Department of the City of Zurich (start-up funding), by the mercator (interest) foundation, the Department of Educational Sciences of the University of Zurich (interest) and by the Unterstrass Institute of the Zurich University of Teacher Education (cooperation agreement).
The AOZ aims for the sustainable institutional anchoring of Future Kids as an offer of school-supplementary learning and integration promotion. For this purpose, the competent authorities and administrative units in the Zurich area are to be included in the responsibility until 2015.