Long Beach Better Learning for All Students Today

BLAST is a non profit that provides mentoring services. Thanks to our remarkable partnerships with community and school sites as well as many college faculty, we are able to welome a variety of volunteers. The vast majority of our volunteers are college students and they apply for our signature program, the Academic Mentoring Program. In this program volunteers are matched one-on-one with a younger student. The minimum commitment for this program is 20 hours and 8 weeks, however, many volunteers excced this commitment. Volunteers either meet their mentee at their school or a community after school program and they are supported by BLAST staff and on-site staff.

BLAST is also able to offer a number of customized internships including those that require well over 100 hours. All internships include a "standard" mentorship but the full scope of responsibilities and objectives can be customized to the volunteer's goals and needs.

We do our best to make sure our volunteers feel prepared to mentor. We facilitate an interactive training before the volunteers are placed in the field. In conjunction with our site directiors, we offer flexible mentorships so the volunteers can participate in group activities (recreation, arts, theatre, etc), carve out one-on-one time (playing cards games, reading aloud to each other, or homework assistance), or even bring their own fun ideas. At the same time we understand that not everyone has experience working with younger kids and we do our best to support our volunteers by visiting each site regularly to check in with everyone, responding as quickly as possible to email, providing access to a national database of activities and more.

In addition to all that, it is INCREDIBLY easy to volunteer with us. The first step is to apply online. Submitting an application does not "lock you in" to a mentoring placement, but it does open the door for our staff to contact you and see if this AMAZING opportunity is right for you!