INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITY SERVICE---CROSSROADS COMMUNITY OUTREACH FOUNDATION
A Private School Strengthened by its Public Efforts

INSTITUTIONAL COMMUNITY SERVICE is a unique leadership program conceived by Crossroads to share its resources with the underserved in our broader Los Angeles community. Throughout the school’s history, community service has been an integral part of the kindergarten through twelfth grade curriculum and the life of the community.  Requiring of itself what it has always required of its students (community service has always been a graduation requirement), institutional community service was a natural evolutionary step and a deep reflection of the school’s founding mission and community values.

“I think the best way for independent schools to be embraced by their communities is to become an active participant in them.  As long as independent schools serve only their own, regardless of what else they do, they will be perceived as elitist institutions, gated and moated and inaccessible.  To be a genuine part of the community, independent schools must use their extraordinary resources and networks to get out into the community and make a difference.” – Roger Weaver, Headmaster, Crossroads School

HISTORY AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
In 1993, with initial funding from the Herb Alpert Foundation and Crossroads School, Crossroads Community Foundation was created with Paul Cummins as founder and Executive Director. 

As a commitment to the arts was one of the school’s core founding values, and in response to the fact that arts budgets in Los Angeles public schools had essentially been eliminated, CCF began to develop quality arts programs for public schools that reflected the Crossroads curriculum and philosophy.  P.S. Arts, the inaugural project of CCF, was created to provide children with life enhancing music, visual arts and drama programs.  Enormously successful, P.S. Arts now serves more than 10,000 students and has become its own entity.

Next, Paul Cummins established New Visions Foundation.  Its mission was to found schools based on the Crossroads philosophy, and to provide substantial financial aid to their populations.  This highly successful educational innovation launched New Roads School, which now has three campuses and each year serves more than 400 elementary, middle and upper school students. New Visions, in partnership with other charter schools, has been an active partner in the founding of several new schools, such as the much-heralded Camino Nuevo School located near downtown Los Angeles. 


CROSSROADS COMMUNITY OUTREACH FOUNDATION
Crossroads Community Foundation has been reorganized as Crossroads Community Outreach Foundation.  With Headmaster, Roger Weaver, as President, the past two years have been spent researching, identifying, and evaluating a wide variety of potential partnerships and programs.  After careful and thorough examination, CCOF has determined its initial focus:
• Partnership with St. Anne School in support of their founding policy of “exercising a preferential option for the poor” and providing them with a quality education.
• Development and implementation of PS Science, a program envisioned to provide an engaging and exploration-based science experience to young children at underserved public schools.


For more information about Crossroads Community Outreach Foundation, please contact Gennifer Yoshimaru, Director of Institutional Advancement at (310) 829-7391.