Weekly Media Roundup: October 8, 2025

Bike Repair Program in Atlanta's West End Teaches Kids Confidence and Life Lessons, CBS News Atlanta (Georgia)

Bearings Bike Works, a nonprofit in Atlanta’s West End, has helped as many as 300 students this year learn to build and repair bicycles. Through the program, students earn “stars” by advancing through skill levels, which they can use to buy bikes and tools. Bearings, which also refurbishes, repairs, and sells bicycles to support the program, aims to teach students practical skills that they can turn into careers in skilled trades, engineering, and machining, while building their confidence. Justice Golden, a nine-year-old who has learned how to repair his own bike in the program, told CBS News Atlanta that Bike Works “taught me patience. Sometimes the bike might be frustrating to put together…. When I grow up, I want to be an engineer. Engineers like to build stuff, and this place is teaching me how to build bikes.”

California’s After-School Programs and Summer Initiative Spawn Surprise Dividend: New Teachers, EdSource (California)

California’s $4 billion-a-year Expanded Learning Opportunities Program supports after-school and summer enrichment programs across the state, typically run by nonprofits in partnership with local school districts. According to education leaders, the initiative has the welcome side effect of helping to recruit new teaches. Bay Area program Aim High estimates that over its 40-year history it has helped bring thousands of students and employees into the teaching profession, including over 100 of its staff just this summer. As summer programs don’t require a teaching credential, they offer an opportunity for instructors to gain experience working with kids and to explore whether pursuing a teaching career is right for them. According to Cheryl Cotton, West Contra Costa Unified Superintendent, “our after-school staff are local community residents who come to our classrooms with skill sets in lesson planning, classroom management, and supporting students. Most importantly, they have an interest in and love for engaging with students.”

Three United Ways Awarded $1M to Support After-School Programming, Worcester Business Journal (Massachusetts)

The United Ways of Central Massachusetts (UWCM), North Central Massachusetts, and South Central Massachusetts were awarded a combined $1.08 million in state funding, which they will use to support sixty-seven local after-school programs. “Too often, after-school programming is overlooked as ‘extra’ when in fact it is essential,” Echo Lahey, UWCM’s director of special projects and initiatives, told Worcester Business Journal. The funding will support after-school and out-of-school-time programs focused on STEM, arts apprenticeships, refugee support, and leadership development, including ArtsWorcester’s Future Arts Workers Initiative and the Worcester Refugee Assistance Project. 

Nonprofit to Open Multi-Sport Complex in Lakewood to Expand Youth Programs, KIRO (Washington)

Game Time, a Tacoma nonprofit that supports kids and teens through sports, academics, and mentorship, is opening a new 22,000-square-foot multisport complex in Pierce County, Washington. The facility will have full-sized courts for basketball, pickleball, and volleyball, a center for after-school programs, and a weight room. Game Time also hopes it will be a community space for sports league games and tournaments, including leagues with adaptive sports for special-needs athletes. Donovan Gill, a 19-year-old Game Time alumnus, credits the organization with helping him succeed in school. “They help you stay on the right path and help you, guide you away from all the other distractions that wouldn’t help you to where you’re trying to get,” Gill told KIRO.