South Side Opportunity Services is an after school program seeking to assist students in the kindergarten through twelfth grades to perform at grade level.  We seek to do this by providing committed and loving tutors for them in a safe, clean environment.  Our students and teachers meet each week on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:30 to 7 p.m.  Each student is assigned a tutor.  The tutors help the students with their homework assignments or questions from class.

We believe that success in school minimizes the attractiveness of gangs and crime.  We also see this program as a frontal assault on the hopelessness of poverty.

Our student participants are recruited in a number of ways.  Elementary and secondary schools in southeast Fort Wayne have been advised of our program.  The juvenile courts in the area also refer students to our program.  SOS is eighteen years old and is well established in this community.  When parents see low grades at the end of the marking period, they send their children to us.

To provide an education in a safe environment where students are accepted and nurtured enabling them to learn and to achieve their full potential through a caring ministry to the whole person. Emphasis is placed on academic excellence.

An evening in the life of a tutor is as follows

4:30 - 5:00   Bible Time and Prayer
Our Bible time consists of teaching Bible basics such as The Ten Commandments, Psalm 23, The Lord's Prayer, and books of The Bible

5:00 - 5:30   Dinner is served
Parents/Tutors volunteer to bring in food for the children

5:30 - 7:00   Tutoring
Students are rewarded with 30 minutes of "reward time" if they have done well

7:00 - 7:30   Staff Meeting
This time is used to review any problems, issues, and/or praises

The SOS Tutoring schedule follows the Fort Wayne Community Schools schedule - when FWCS is closed for holidays or inclement weather, there is no tutoring that evening.