Community Engagement & Opportunity Council

This week is #NationalReadAcrossAmericaWeek encouraging the love of books and dedication to reading in every community across the United States. Promoting literacy and making it fun is a passion for us, and our dedicated volunteers are the very best at it!

Class II of First Down kicked off last night as our high school student athletes learned proper dining etiquette to improve their face-to-face interactions, conduct themselves with distinction, and build relationships. We are so grateful for Joy Weaver of Socially Savvy, and NFL Legend Marcus R Price, MBA for pouring into this wonderful new group of mentees!

A week into our Spring session and both First Kid campuses are filled with the excitement and anticipation of growth! Did you know that in a full session our kiddos receive 60+ hours of supplemental reading to strengthen their foundational reading skills? We sure love making a generational impact in the lives of these little ones and their families!

New Year, New Look, Endless Gratitude! Remember how we said we had more news to share in January? Well… we are LIVE! Our website has been completely refreshed. It’s a nod to the incredible milestones of the past few years & a look to the future as we continue our mission of revitalizing communities through sports, mentorship, and economic opportunity. CHECK IT OUT and sign up for our quarterly newsletter - The Huddle - so you can stay on top of all our updates! We have more coming - stay tuned! 

Happy New Year! 🎉 We pray that God blesses you with a safe, healthy, and joyous New Year. We are excited to embark on another year filled with opportunities and shared success.

We want to take a moment to thank all our amazing donors, partners, volunteers, and supporters for making this year such a success. We are incredibly grateful to be on this journey with you to revitalize our communities by way of sport, mentorship, and economic opportunity.    We pray that you and yours will have joy and peace as we celebrate THE reason for the season, Jesus Christ. Merry Christmas!

Some of you have already noticed the change in our last quarterly newsletter, but we are excited to share that we are heading into the holiday season with a new look! Thank you ImageArb for selecting us to be one of your non-profits to work with and guiding us on our new logo. Our logo is special to us as step by step we are making a generational impact into the lives of those in our community through CEOC and those that partner with us. 2025 is going to be a big year for us, and we will be sharing more exciting news regarding CEOC in January!

We completely agree with Dr. Carson's sentiments on Scott Turner, our Founder and CEO, in the Washington Examiner! 👏 👏 👏

Our fall session has ended at both Learning Lab campuses. The joy that comes from these kiddos as they gain confidence and enjoyment in reading never gets old and our volunteers and Lab Directors are the absolute best! We are counting down the days to our spring session!

We had a great time seeing some of our SMU football mentees from CEOC’s “First Down U” mentorship program! They had a big victory vs. CAL. Congratulations to the SMU Mustangs on a fantastic regular season! On to the ACC championship game vs. the Clemson Tigers!