Zion: Change for a Hundred

Welcome to another edition of #Snapshot, where we bring you a glimpse of what’s going on at Summer Search.

Earlier this summer, we shared a few of our favorite summer partner shout outs that we received from our friends at Chewonki and Amigos de las Américas. Well, we just got another one, this time from National Outdoor Leadership School, better known as NOLS!

If you look closely at the above photo, which is from the summer issue of the NOLS alumni newsletter, you might be able to spot Bay Area Summer Searcher Zion!

In an article entitled Peer Empowerment for Academic Success, the high school senior from Oakland is featured for creating a peer-centered tutoring program called Change for a Hundred. Zion explains that the motivation for this idea came after experiencing peer-to-peer learning on his first summer program with NOLS in 2015.

The Change for a Hundred program encourages students to support each other, providing opportunities for honor-roll students, like Zion, to step up and tutor fellow students who might be struggling academically.

In the article, Zion says “I want to see more students that are ready to step into a leadership role to teach more students peer empowerment for academic success. We can really learn a lot more if we pay attention to each other and reach out when we need help.”

We want to thank NOLS not only for giving Zion a chance to share his story, but for providing the kinds of challenging, life-changing experiences that brought out the leader in him, and Summer Searchers like him.