City Year SA Wins ImpactSA's $100K Grant With Koasis Media
Creates Opportunity for Underserved SAISD Students
Serving the San Antonio community for 27 years, City Year San Antonio has made it their double bottom-line to support students during the pandemic and beyond, especially the students of San Antonio's Independent School District. In order to continue their initiatives, City Year San Antonio became the finalists of Impact San Antonio's 2021 High Impact Grant for Education to expand their operations into SAISD's De Zavala Elementary School.
City Year SA's Impact San Antonio finalist video began with a few hard facts. Managing Director of Impact, Jeff May, explains "...half the students in the US who do not graduate high school come from only 6% of the school districts across the country... That is why at City Year we partner with the San Antonio Independent School District, who is among that 6%."
The finalist video continues to explain how City Year can assist teachers and help students build their social-emotional and academic skills. "A recent study by Johns Hopkins University," May shares, "revealed City Year helps students gain an additional year of academic progress". Former Executive Director, Kelly Hughes-Burton, then goes on to say "In addition to providing a service to students, City Year invests in the personal and professional development of our [AmeriCorps members]." AmeriCorps members are City Year representatives who work at the schools they serve to support children and teachers in and out of the classrooms.
According to the video's narrative, not only does partnering with City Year mean additional support for students and teachers, but they also develop future workforce leaders through their AmeriCorps members-and Koasis Media got to see it firsthand. "As a San Antonio native and former student of SAISD," Co-founder of Koasis Media, Christie Kaye, states, "I'm honored to partner with an organization supporting students who were just like me."
To tie everything together, City Year and Koasis Media made it imperative to include an AmeriCorps member's perspective on the impact City Year provides. "I am a product of SAISD" Cathy Preciado, an AmeriCorps member states, "I grew up 15 minutes away from the campus, and City Year was at my high school." In the video, Preciado goes on to share how proud she is to serve in a district and organization that gave so much to her and her community, and how she feels a sense of responsibility to be a role model for the students she serves.
With only 2.5 weeks to plan, produce, and revise a 5 minute video featuring 2 locations, 6 interviews, and 7 collaborators, City Year and Koasis Media collectively worked to the very last minute to submit City Year's finalist video.
On October 25, 2021, Koasis Media received some of the best news a media partner could ask for. City Year San Antonio was awarded Impact San Antonio's 2021 High Impact Grant of $100K for Education. "I literally jumped in joy when we received the news, " Kaye shares, "[Koasis Media] is so grateful to have City Year [as a client]. Especially now, knowing how amazing their culture is, and how much kindness, care, and empathy [they have] for one another."
City Year SA's initiatives continue as Koasis Media seeks to partner with additional organizations looking to create impact through purposeful media.
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Credentials: City Year San Antonio, Impact San Antonio, Koasis Media
