Think of Velocity as Love Your City in schools. We train and develop high school students to be mentors to middle school students. As relationships form, we build connections with the school, community, and business partners, and entire schools are transformed. Watch the video below for more.
In 2010, the University of Texas-San Antonio's mentoring expert Dr. Michael Karcher invited Boy With a Ball to team with him in implementing a cross age mentoring program designed by him. The program was named Velocity and launched in January of 2011 with 34 high school mentors meeting with their middle school mentees in weekly afterschool sessions at the high school. Over the past nine years, Velocity has grown across the U.S. and the world with the same life changing impact on both the mentors, the mentees and their families, who are invited into the program in quarterly Super Saturdays and periodic family engagement visits. Velocity utilizes developmental mentoring relationships that increase the mentors, mentees and their families' connectedness to family, their school, to their community and to a positive vision for their future. Velocity is built around a published program manual, training manual and curriculum written by Dr. Karcher. The program is listed on the Department of Justice's list of promising practices and is strengthened by Dr. Karcher's support of program monitoring and evaluation.