While GreenLight Atlanta celebrates its inaugural investment, Center for Employment Opportunities, it  has just completed its second investment selection -- The Literacy Lab’s Leading Men Fellows (LMF). 

GreenLight Atlanta, launched with more than 50 local philanthropic investors with a goal to find innovative approaches created and proven elsewhere to help make significant, measurable progress toward a brighter and more equitable future in Atlanta. 

GreenLight Alanta selected LMF after focusing on the impact of COVID-related learning interruption on existing educational inequities in the community. 

Based in Washington, DC, Leading Men Fellows offers a multi-pronged and multi-generational approach to tackling systemic education inequities by 1) closing the literacy gap through evidence-based, high quality tutoring of pre-K students; 2) empowering young men of color with financial resources and personal and professional development; and 3) diversifying the teacher pipeline by laying the foundation for Black and Brown young men to pursue careers as educators. 

Why Leading Men Fellows -- opportunity, impact and innovation. 

Opportunity -- according to the Learn4Life’s 2020 Dashboard, only 35% of metro Atlanta students are kindergarten ready and at the end of last school year, there were 226 pre-K and kindergarten teachers in Atlanta Public Schools, of those, only one was a Black male. 

Impact – with Leading Men Fellows, from fall to spring, 87% of pre-K students grew towards kindergarten readiness from fall to spring; the number of students far below kindergarten readiness targets fell by 39%; and 7x as many pre-K students met kindergarten readiness targets. 

Innovation – Leading Men Fellows is the only two-gen program targeting young men of color with a high school degree or GED and committed to college mentoring and career support focused on diversifying the teacher pipeline, providing generational change.