Capital Region Cares Capital Region Cares 2018-2019 | Page 75

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food on the table. “That resonated with
me and made me want to do better in
school so I can support my family in the
future,” he says.
Being involved in IYT — and sports
— helped Lauderdale realize that he
couldn’t keep hanging around bad in-
fluences, because he might adopt this
“Improve Your
Tomorrow became
that second family
that was looking out
for me.”
— Samuel Lauderdale, lead academic
mentor at Valley High School,
Improve Your Tomorrow
behavior. “IYT became that second fam-
ily that was looking out for me,” he says.
The mentors helped him not only with
schoolwork, but handling the social and
emotional stresses of adolescence by
“always checking in on me,” he adds.
“They became like those big brothers
that continually watched out for me in
high school.”
For Lauderdale, seeing black and
Latino men on an IYT field trip to Stan-
ford University prompted him to recon-
sider his academic goals. “Not only were
we informed about college and how to

get there by students who looked like us
on campus, we ate great food and had a
good time,” Lauderdale says.
Now, Lauderdale is a junior at Sacra-
mento State, majoring in computer sci-
ence/computer engineering with a goal
of working at a tech company for a few
years before starting his own.
Lynch says Lauderdale has gained
perseverance, work ethic and leadership
through the program. “To me, one of the
most remarkable things about [Lauder-
dale] is that he doesn’t give up,” Lynch
says. “He’s gritty.”
Lynch gives the example that while
Lauderdale struggled with math in
school, he didn’t give up and took Alge-
bra 2 three times. Lauderdale says he ul-
timately raised his math grade to be A-G
eligible his senior year.
Today, things have come full circle.
Lauderdale is giving back to the com-
munity as IYT’s lead academic mentor
at Valley High School, with a caseload of
25 students. He meets with them in both
group and individual sessions, and they
work on everything from accountability
to goal setting to college research.
“I realize what IYT did for me, and
that made me happy that they did that
for me, so why not spread the love and
the wealth and do that for other younger
kids?” Lauderdale says. n
amuel Lauderdale grew up as
the youngest of three brothers
in a single-mother, low-income
household. He was always a good
student, until high school was on the
horizon. He started hanging out with
kids who sold drugs and got bad grades,
and says he “wasn’t necessarily getting
in trouble,” but would “fight a lot.”
Lauderdale also didn’t have a firm
understanding of what college was and
didn’t see the point of getting good
grades. “I didn’t think I needed any more
school after high school to be success-
ful,” he says.
Then in his sophomore year at Valley
High School in south Sacramento, Lau-
derdale joined Improve Your Tomorrow,
after learning about it at a school pre-
sentation.
Improve Your Tomorrow was found-
ed in 2013 by Michael Lynch and Mi-
chael Casper to assist young men of
color from Sacramento County. The
nonprofit started with 17 students, and
now works with nearly 700 young men.
Participants get 12 years of support
from middle school through college,
with services including college prepa-
ration, mentorship, academic support,
cognitive skills development and par-
ent engagement. According to Lynch,
co-founder and CEO, IYT currently has a
100 percent high school graduation rate,
a 66 percent A-G completion rate and a
94 percent college attendance rate.
Lauderdale latched onto IYT, learn-
ing that a college degree made finan-
cial struggle less likely, as his own fam-
ily would occasionally struggle to keep
Willie Clark is a writer, editor, photog-
rapher and co-host of the 8 Bit Awesome
gaming podcast. On Twitter @_Willie-
Clark or willieclark.contently.com.
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