5 Unique and Inspiring Educational Nonprofits

Most of us don’t have a lot of love for our school days: diagramming sentences, solving algebra equations, and memorizing the state capitols isn’t exactly the most exciting way for a child to spend his time. In many schools, factors like overcrowding and lack of resources leave students even less inspired, resulting in an influx of high school dropouts.

But while the American education system may be in a sad state, innovative nonprofits around the world are working to help kids get excited about learning. Here are a few of our favorites. Raise money for these nonprofits and other nonprofits.

1. Sesame Workshop . Nearly all of us remember spending time with Big Bird, Snuffy, and Elmo as kids, but Sesame Workshop, the organization behind Sesame Street , isn’t just about puppets and singalongs. Sesame Workshop is focused on providing unique and educational television entertainment to children all around the world, with programming focused on the area’s specific needs and culture. The local version in India, Galli Galli Sim Sim , features a lion and a little girl who play language games to encourage poor and marginalized children to learn to read. In South Africa, Takalani Sesame promotes racial harmony, and an HIV-positive puppet speaks directly to children about the country’s AIDS crisis, using early education to help prevent future outbreaks.

2. Spark . Not everyone learns well sitting at a desk. Some do better in a national park, at the beach, beneath a car, or in a video editing room. The San Francisco-based Spark program, operated by a nonprofit called Resonate, helps hands-on learners by providing middle school students with apprenticeship opportunities in cooking, architecture, filmmaking, and a wide variety of other exciting fields, led by experienced mentors. The program’s goal is to show students how much fun learning can be by giving them a taste of what it's like to do a job you love. The apprenticeship experience culminates with a final project in which each student will create a presentation to teach others about their new skill, helping to establish communication and passion between each student and his school and community.

3. Cool Culture. New York City is one of the world’s coolest places, loaded with eclectic museums, theaters, wildlife centers, and other cultural hubs. The problem is, almost all of it costs money, which means that many low-income families miss out on the amazing cultural opportunities right outside their doors. The nonprofit group Cool Culture helps them out by providing free passes to more than 70 museums, zoos, and botanical centers throughout the city, so that parents can help their kids explore the wonders of the Big Apple without worrying about whether they can make the rent payment next month.

4. Soliya. Even before 9/11, the relationship between the West and the Middle East wasn’t perfect. But these days, things are downright hostile. Muslims automatically receive full-body scans at airport security gates, and dirty looks from passersby on the streets. Some parents even tell their children that all Muslims are terrorists—a dangerous and deluded fiction that may irreparably damage our relationship with the Middle East, if we’re not careful. The nonprofit group Soliya is working to mend ties between cultures by providing in the Western and Muslim worlds with opportunities to connect and collaborate online as a way to share and discuss their perspectives. The students can have weekly videoconference discussions, learn about one another’s cultures from Soliya’s comprehensive media library, and work together on media projects to demonstrate their learnings to the wider world. The program provides an opportunity for two very different youth cultures to learn about one another—and hopefully to realize that we’re a lot more alike than we seem.

5. 826 National . Lots of kids associate writing with dry vocabulary books and SAT prep classes. But writing can be fun—if you let it. The tutors at the seven regional branches of 826 National take the act of playing with words to a new extreme, instructing kids in whimsical courses like comic book writing to writing a Rolling Stone rock music review. The centers also offer free drop-in tutoring for homework assistance, field trips to exciting and inspiring locations around the city, and free use of computer equipment and software. The first local nonprofit, 826 Valencia in San Francisco, also hosts a pirate shop in the same building. So if you’re on the lookout for an eyepatch or a spelling lesson, you know where to go!