In City Heights, a Tutoring Org Changes Refugee Lives

It’s Tuesday evening at Ibarra Elementary School in City Heights. But instead of the campus falling quiet as the sky darkens outside, kids are bouncing into classrooms. Some 75 neighborhood students are sitting down with volunteers from throughout the county for 90 minutes of one-on-one English and math practice. This is San Diego Refugee Tutoring (SDRT), a biweekly nonprofit program that helps some of the most vulnerable kids in the city acclimate not just to school, but to a new life.

“Nobody knows what it’s like to come here with no family, no footing, no money,” SDRT co-founder and Executive Director Melissa Phillips says. “These families need support.”

November 5, 2024

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While teaching at Ibarra 16 years ago, Phillips noticed that refugee kids were being thrown into a school system ill-equipped to cater to their unique needs. They frequently spoke multiple languages but were considered behind in their classes because of a lack of exposure to English, and their parents—many of whom were still experiencing trauma from violence and displacement—often didn’t know English, either. So, she brought together a handful of her refugee students to be tutored by a small group of high school students. Things scaled dramatically from there. Now, the program is offered two nights per week, with some 150 kids, from elementary through high school, receiving individualized attention from 150 volunteers.

One of those volunteers is Sopyda Yin, a 24-year-old research assistant at UCSD who began tutoring with SDRT more than a year ago. Tonight, she’s working with Juliet Moo, a second grader whose family fled from Burma.

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Yin’s parents and grandparents came to the US as refugees, which is one reason she feels called to volunteer. “In school, there was a lack of cultural awareness toward kids from immigrant households,” she says. “I see the setbacks in my own education, and I want more opportunities for these kids.”

Phillips, too, dreams of offering more resources for the students. “This neighborhood is dense with refugee kids,” she says. “We could run a program for 400 kids if we had the volunteers to support it. It could be five nights a week because the kids are so eager. One-on-one attention is hard to come by, especially for an hour and a half.”