“Joey, age 10 has big blue eyes, shaggy blond hair. Joey has recently been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. He struggles with reading and math in school. His sister, Hannah, can only identify a few letters of the alphabet and is unable to keep up with her kindergarten class. Joey and Hannah’s mom is a single parent. She works at a minimum wage job and lives paycheck to paycheck barely keeping up with the monthly bills. Joey and Hannah’s dad is an alcoholic and hasn’t seen his children in the past two years. Counseling and tutoring would be extremely helpful to this family, but mom’s job doesn’t provide medical insurance and private tutoring is too expensive.”
Building stronger families has been the focus of the North Hills Youth Ministry Counseling Center (NHYMCC) for more than 40 years. Our professional mental health counselors provide children, youth, and families with hope, healing, and spiritual guidance as they struggle to deal with the stresses and challenges of life.
Years of experience, supported by clinical evaluation records, show that counseling improves the mental health of children, but many also are in need of academic assistance and extensive nurturing. Our Youth Development Program, implemented in 2001, delivers a broad range of much needed and effective help. The counseling program focuses on improving the mental and spiritual health of its young clients and strives to restore effective communications within their families. The tutoring/mentoring component seeks to increase the self-worth and academic achievements of at-risk students.
Since the beginning of 2007, we have increasingly accepted more students into the tutoring program who are from families who struggle financially. Even though our tutoring fees of $5, $8, and $10 are far below the average cost, approximately 7% – 10% of our students are tutored free-of-charge while over 70% of the students pay the lowest rate of $5.00 per session. We have never turned a child away from the tutoring program due to lack of funds.
Our wish is for you to make a “huge difference” in a child’s life. Volunteer as a tutor one hour a week or “Adopt a Student” for as little as $10 a week.
Please call 412.366.1300 for additional information.