(Photo by J.G. Park)

It’s the start of the school year, and if you’re looking for a way to volunteer with students in D.C., now’s the time.

D.C.’s student population is widely struggling: the most recent test results show that just one-third of the 80,000 students in the District are proficient in English and math, and despite small improvements, the achievement gap between white and black students persists.

These consistent problems, says Emily Kuhbach of the D.C. Tutoring and Mentoring Initiative, mean that many students are in need of extra help outside the classroom in the form of academic tutors or adult mentors.

DCTMI partners with 44 organizations that request volunteer tutors or mentors for school-age children in D.C., including College Bound and the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. Its job is mainly to recruit volunteers for its partner organizations, a task that has not proven easy.

“We run into a huge problem with this, to be frank,” Kuhbach says. “Our partner organizations request volunteers from the ten to the hundreds. We are not able to recruit anywhere close to that number.”

Kuhbach says that often, volunteers feel they’re not able to dedicate the time necessary to volunteer at these organizations. Part of DCTMI’s work involves speaking with people to try to find time in their schedules and reiterate the difference this kind of mentoring and tutoring work can make for a child academically, emotionally, and socially, she says.

“We try to talk to people about why they might not think they have the time, why they might not perceive this as their problem,” Kuhbach says. “It’s all of our problem.”

The non-profit runs with a very small team: the director and founder, Tom Pollak, started the organization in 2015 and brings on three to four interns to help with recruitment every summer. Kuhbach, the assistant director, is also a summer employee.

All together, DCTMI has recruited 1,945 volunteer tutors or mentors, and about 770 of those have been placed at an organization. Kuhbach says that some people they recruit end up not volunteering for a variety of reasons, but they’re trying to improve that rate.

DCTMI has a sign-up survey for volunteers that helps match them to the right organization.

“We are advocating for a radically simple model that just requires a lot more buy-in,” Kuhbach says.