Corporate Volunteer Team Programs

Why do companies offer volunteer opportunities to their employees? A great team builder, volunteering with a young person can be a breath of fresh air for the employee and pay important dividends for the student as well. Corporate Volunteer Team Programs provide a valuable opportunity for corporate employees to extend academic support to Cambridge public school students as well as promote career awareness through one-on-one communication and exposure to real-world work settings.

CSV works with businesses to match the interests and availability of their employees with programs that support the educational goals of the Cambridge Public Schools. CSV staff provide management services, including the facilitation of volunteer screening, orientation, training, program coordination, evaluation, and documentation.

> Netpals/Keypals Programs

> Reading Buddies Programs

> Tutoring/Mentoring Partnerships

NetPals/KeyPals Programs
NetPals/KeyPals programs pair adults with middle school students for one-on-one communication via e-mail. Adults exchange messages with their student partners in a friendly letter format, while students share assignments from a variety of disciplines, including science, math literacy, and language arts. The program provides adult role models, fosters the improvement of writing and computer skills, and increases career awareness through one-on-one virtual mentoring and three to four face-to-face meetings in the workplace and at school.

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Reading Buddies Programs
Reading Buddies programs promote early literacy by pairing adult volunteers with first, second or third graders to read aloud weekly or bi-weekly, usually during the adult's lunch hour. Through training provided by CPS teachers and CSV staff, volunteers learn effective techniques for engaging children in conversation about books and helping them relate new words and concepts to prior knowledge. At a year-end celebration for students and volunteers, each student receives a gift book chosen by his or her Reading Buddy.

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Tutoring/Mentoring Partnerships
Teams of tutors or mentors from Cambridge businesses and corporations may be placed in any of several supervised settings, such as academic Learning Centers or the CRLS Tutoring Center. Volunteers must commit to a regular schedule and agree to attend a pre-service training led by CSV and CPS staff.

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2009-2010 Corporate Partners

Archemix scientists partner with a seventh grade science class at the Kennedy-Longfellow School to provide mentors to 20 students working on a bio-pharmaceutical project.  Students and their mentors work in small groups designing their own lab experiments to simulate a medicine’s breakdown process.  The program includes a field trip to Archemix’s headquarters in East Cambridge.  The Archemix/Kennedy-Longfellow partnership is the newest of CSV’s ten corporate programs.

Cambridge Systematics (CS) employees provide tutoring to individual students before- and after-school and correspond as NetPals with sixth graders at the Peabody School.  As part of the NetPals program, CS sponsors two opportunities for students to meet their students: a luncheon at Bertucci’s and an on-site math breakfast at which students learn how math is used in the workplace and in everyday life.  The program culminates with a school-based event at which adults have an opportunity to view each student’s Science Fair project.  For the past four years, CS has sponsored a holiday card contest in which employees choose a student design for the company’s holiday greeting card that is sent to thousands of people around the world.

Genzyme Corporation employees are paired with first and second graders at the Fletcher-Maynard Academy as Reading Buddies. Genzyme provides bus transportation for its employees so that they can read aloud to their student Buddies once a week from January to June. In the Fall, the program will move to the second grade so that the current first graders can continue with their Reading Buddies for a second semester. Genzyme also provides funding for a dedicated book collection and gift books for each child.  The books are presented at a picnic for all Reading Buddies and students.  In addition, the company supports the school with an annual donation to its library.

Harvard Graduate School of Education, through its Office of Student Affairs, matches employees and graduate students as Reading Buddies with second graders at Amigos, a bilingual school.  Each student has two buddies, one who reads in English and one who reads in Spanish, through the Lectores y Amiguitos program.  HGSE employees are model Reading Buddies, understanding the process of language acquisition and literacy development in both English and Spanish.  HGSE provides funding for a dedicated book collection, gift books in Spanish and English, and mid- and year-end celebrations for both programs.

IBM, through its international Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs initiative, MentorPlace, collaborates with Draper and MIT to match employees as KeyPals with fifth and sixth graders from the Kennedy-Longfellow School.  Twice during the year, IBM hosts a working luncheon for the students and their KeyPal mentors at which the students share their work and are able to visit their KeyPals’ offices. IBM co-sponsors the year- end KeyPal luncheon with MIT and Draper and hosts the fifth grade students at IBM for a year-end celebration of student work.

MIT employees are matched as KeyPals with students from the Kennedy/Longfellow School in collaboration with Draper Laboratory and IBM.  MIT funds the books for the KeyPals bookshare project and hosts all of the students and their KeyPals at a festive year-end celebration, attended by school department and city officials, where students showcase the work they have shared with their KeyPals throughout the year

Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research scientists are matched as NetPals with seventh graders at the Cambridgeport School.  This program has a science focus, helping students with their Science Expo projects. NetPals meet in person twice at Novartis for lunch and conversation about science topics and once at school, where scientists get to view their students' completed EXPO projects. Novartis mentors also accompany their students to the Museum of Science for an all-day field trip sponsored by Novartis.

Volpe National Transportation Center sponsors a Reading Buddies/Lunch Buddies program in which Volpe employees are paired with second and third graders at the Kennedy-Longfellow School to read aloud every other week from October to June.  At year-end celebrations, Volpe employees present their student Buddies with gift books, and third graders get to visit the Volpe Center. Since its inception, more than 350 employees have participated in the program, and fifteen employees have volunteered ten years or more. 

W.R. Grace & Co. joined the Peabody NetPals program with Cambridge Systematics three years ago.  Grace employees write to students in one sixth grade classroom. Their correspondence has focused on various school language arts topics as well as the students' science fair projects. Grace co-sponsors with Cambridge Systematics the math breakfast and the NetPals luncheon at Bertucci’s which concludes with a visit to a Grace laboratory. Grace NetPals meet their students for a third time at the school-based science fair in May.

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