OASES trains its staff and U.C. Berkeley student volunteers to provide age-appropriate and grade-level specific academic tutoring that is skills-based and aligned with the school-day curriculum. LEAP provides academic assistance in a variety of subjects, with a specific focus on literacy and math with an effectively low tutor to student ratio of 1:1 to 1:4.
In 2007, OASES was invited to implement its cost–efficient after school model to Cleveland Elementary School in the Cleveland Heights District of Oakland. In 2005-06, only 18% of Cleveland students attended the on-campus after school program. OASES now serves 28% of all Cleveland students.
OASES hosts a month long summer program to serve 45 3rd to 5th grade students from Cleveland and Lincoln Elementary School every summer. Each year a different theme is selected depending on the interest and need of our community. This year, our summer program theme is “Kids n’ Engineering”.
OASES was formed in 1983 by a small group of students from U.C. Berkeley who grew up around the Oakland Chinatown area. Our original group of volunteers believed in the need to increase educational and social support for immigrant youth in Oakland. Steadily the Volunteer Program grew from a small group of volunteers to a large team of 200+ volunteers per semester. Today, OASES continues to train and recruit volunteers from UC Berkeley, and recently expand to Laney Community college to make up the biggest volunteer force in any afterschool program of the Oakland Unified School District.