LEAP focuses activities around the concept of Being My Brother’s Keeper.
The Legacy Exposure and Access Program (‘LEAP’) is an extracurricular program aimed at improving educational and health outcomes beginning with middle-school age students and continuing through high school, with a focus on college graduation.
We believe Talent is Universal, but Opportunities are not. We focus our energies on creating opportunities for success. Our mission can be summarized by the following:
- Improve students proficiency in their core subjects
- Increase exposure to new experiences
- Encourage healthy behaviors with an emphasis on good nutrition
- Develop a college-going culture
Legacy partners with schools to provide academic and experiential support and enrichment to LEAP Scholars. School administration and staff collaborate with Legacy to provide academic instruction and experiential access tailored to what Scholars learn in school. In addition, LEAP provides meaningful summer options, such as debate and overnight camp, to ensure that Scholars did not regress academically. Equally important is Legacy’s commitment to serving all middle-schoolers.
LEAP also recognizes that while test scores are important and measurable, they are far from the only way to improve life outcomes for our Scholars. The Legacy Foundation has deep roots in greater Hartford and leverages its connections to provide otherwise-inaccessible opportunities to LEAP Scholars. The proof of our success is found in the results.
We believe every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. We are doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of helping our youth build a solid foundation for future success. Our academic enrichment program for students annually incorporates a daily after-school curriculum with teachers focused on supplementing the core subjects of Math, Language Arts, and Science with a variety of purposeful and experiential learning opportunities.
Our program highlights include
- Helping develop the top middle school students at our partner schools, identified by class rank at 8th-grade graduation
- Producing high school students who enroll in Advanced Placement courses
- Legacy scholars are provided “camperships” to experience overnight summer camps at regional traditional summer camps
- Legacy scholars participate in the Westfield Academy of Debate Program
- We take annual trips to Boston to visit the Freedom Trail, to NYC to visit the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Museum of Natural History
- Our scholars participate in golf, yoga, skiing, among other activities and life skills offerings to develop the whole child
Through our dedicated staff and deep connections in greater Hartford and beyond, we have been able to provide enriching opportunities to our Scholars, many who live below the poverty line and many of whom have parents who did not pursue a college education, and some who did not complete high school. We believe college matriculation and completion offers significant advantages for our youth. We are aggressive in building the foundation for future college success for our kids.
Our scholars meet periodically with our in-house college counselor beginning in middle school to engage in our “college-going culture.”
We “Treat Education as if their lives depend on it because the quality of their lives does”!
