Care for Students started in April of 2020 as a way to give back to our community during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw the incredible burden school closures put on the parents, teachers, and students of public schools around the country. Like many employees lucky enough to be able to work remotely, we would hear our coworkers’ children’s voices in the background of meetings, and sat in awe as the parents among us would explain the stress of balancing work, homelife, health, and now the education of their children. We also knew that just due to the fact that they were on work calls with us, these parents were the lucky ones. The burden on families whose income was affected by the pandemic was even more severe.

Teachers, students, and parents were all scrambling to adjust and we knew we needed to help. For our pilot, we specifically targeted a number of public middle and high schools in the Puget Sound that served primarily minority and middle/low-income communities. We found that there was significant interest in getting this support to their students. With the need identified, we reached out to our personal network of fellow Microsoft employees and asked if they would be willing to help. The response was overwhelming. We had originally hoped for around 40 volunteers, and instead received more than 85 from around the U.S. and Canada – all of whom had 4-year degrees, were incredibly comfortable with technology, and had a passion for helping students.

 In less than a week, we were running initial test tutoring sessions at our first high school. From there we began to scale out to a total of four schools. The pilot ran for seven weeks and even in that short time our incredible volunteers were able to make a significant impact for families, students and teachers. We ran a total of 130 one-hour tutoring sessions, generating 520 additional hours of instruction for students, and $17,000+ for our schools through Microsoft Volunteer Match. We’re proud to say, at the end of those seven weeks, all four of our pilot schools chose to continue on with the Care for Students program for Fall 2020.