Each of the past six school years members from three Green Mountain Neighborhood area churches (Lakewood Church of Christ, Concordia Lutheran, and Faith Mountain Church) have partnered with neighbors from the Green Mountain Civic Association and other community volunteers to support students at Foothills Elementary School here in the Green Mountain neighborhood of west Lakewood. The goal of this collaboration of neighbors, churches and friends is an afterschool tutoring program called Whiz Kids.

Whiz Kids has been changing lives in positive ways and operating in Denver for over 25 years. The afterschool tutoring program is faith based and uses community volunteers for one-on-one tutoring for students. In six years the impact of Whiz Kids at Foothills Elementary has been tremendous: academic scores, enrollment, teacher morale and family engagement have all improved dramatically!

A high point of our Foothills Whiz Kid program year is an annual Christmas party held at Lakewood Church of Christ each December. On December the 7, we held our 6^th and biggest dinner event yet! Over 130 were in attendance!  Students, their families, tutors, teachers, Santa, and community members attended and enjoyed an incredible meal, entertainment, dessert, a blessing from Principal Josh Shapiro, gifts and a turkey raffle! The energy in the room was joyful and festive!

The goal of the dinner is to bless these families with one of the best meals they will receive all year and celebrate the hard work of our students. When you support Lakewood Connects you literally change the future for 100s of students across Lakewood, Colorado!

This year the spirit of community was demonstrated when two families with graduated Whiz Kids came back to help with the event. Sometimes you don’t realize how important a program is to someone until you ask them to help with it after they have moved on from it. Their energy for serving at the dinner party was an unexpected highlight of the event for the tutors and community volunteers and helped us all realize that the sacrifices of what we’re doing here continues to bless and make an impact long into the future.