Greetings to our friends in China!

I know I have written about social media before, but the internet sometimes surprises me in ways that I can't quite comprehend. One of the great things about this site, Blogger, is that it gives me analytics. I can see how many people read each posting (so please share this!!), which country they are viewing it from and even what kind of device they are using to read it. As I write this, our stats show that we have 36 pageviews from China, so "Ni Hao"!!

While this is an interesting and fun tidbit, I think it also shows how open we are to the rest of the world as well as how much of an impact we can make. Imagine if we were getting views from 5 different countries. Or maybe 50! The significance of this wouldn't be that thousands of people like to read blogs written by a newbie blogger, but that thousands of people "get" what we are doing.

I sometimes struggle when people ask me what St. Mark Youth Enrichment does. If I have a few seconds, I can tell them that we offer before and after school and summer learning programs to help students stay on track, but that seems so inadequate. Our students feel safe at program. They feel welcome. They are surrounded by students who go to the same school as them, but they are aware of their differences. They have teachers who are there and care and often times are at a 1:5 ratio. They have fun! They get a chance to do hands-on activities to help them learn whether it's about science, art, yoga, or literacy. Reading is made fun. Many of them have better academic grades in school. Parents know they can trust the staff. They have snack-and it's healthy! They get to hear and see guest speakers. They have an opportunity to experience things they might not otherwise. Now take this a step further. All of this allows students to apply what is in the world around them to their school curriculum. If their class is discussing how energy works, chances are, students in St. Mark programming have had a chance to actually SEE energy work and make it work themselves! There is so much that goes into creating the curriculum for our programs and the training for our staff to make real life differences.

We want people to "get" it. For some of you, you may need to see it to really understand what our programs do, so let us know and we would love to give you tour or invite you to a lunch and learn. And of course, to our friends who are reading this in China, we appreciate your support as well so keep reading!