La Amistad is an organization with several locations throughout Metro Atlanta that helps underprivileged hispanic children thrive not only in school, but in life. La Amistad means friendship in Spanish. It is all about giving children the tools they need to be successful in school and their future by providing them extra tutoring and also a stable community of friends and role models.
Paige and Lily Vadnais run a La Amistad community engagement club at Pace Academy. In this club, Pace students have the opportunity to tutor the children in this program after school every other Wednesday. While there, volunteers help students with their math homework or their grammar and reading comprehension skills. The children enjoy learning while also having fun with their teenage role models. “I think that it is really important for the kids to have someone closer to their age mentoring them because we can connect with them more than the adults sometimes. We do help them with their homework, but we also provide them a support system that not all of them have at school or even at home.” said junior Paige Vadnais.
Pace Academy also holds a summer program for La Amistad where students from Pace and other schools can volunteer. This program called Keeping Pace is for rising first through sixth grade students and it lasts for four weeks in the month of June. During the first half of the day, the children do math, grammar and reading comprehension. After lunch, the children participate in activities such as swimming, tennis, art and STEM. Volunteers for Keeping Pace are from Pace and other schools around Atlanta. They can either work the entire month or just for a few weeks. The volunteers that work the full month act as a teacher helper and are there all day every day. They are assigned a grade to work with and they help that teacher with classroom management, helping the students understand the material, and anything else the teacher needs. The volunteers that choose to work 1-3 weeks arrive during lunch time and are in charge of taking the kids to their activities and monitoring them while also having fun and participating in the activities. “We obviously help the kids, but in a way, I think that this experience and these kids help us. They teach us empathy, kindness and patience.” said junior Sophia Halsey.
The volunteers at La Amistad have left lasting impacts on the children. Some of the kids struggle in school or in their homelife and the volunteers provide a stable, loving environment for them to express themselves and grow as students and functioning members of their community.
