Who We Are & Our Mission

Who We Are & Our Mission

PEAK focuses on providing support for the youth in our program through two mechanisms: scholarship opportunities and mentoring services. The mission of PEAK is to provide opportunities for at-risk youth to achieve academic and personal success through a quality, values-based education and the guidance of caring adult mentors.

Students in our program are at-risk for dropping out of high school, for repeating the cycle of poverty, and for getting involved in violent and/or drug activity. We assist these youth in achieving a quality high school education through scholarship opportunities and the guidance of adult mentoring. We seek to enable the youth to compete more successfully for employment, to be better qualified for higher education, to achieve greater personal fulfillment, and to ultimately contribute productively to society. Our purpose is to foster hope and break the cycle of poverty and frustration that limits many youth in our society.

PEAK provides full scholarships for at-risk Chicago youth to attend Holy Trinity Catholic high school for four years and mentoring services to help teach them responsibility, discipline, and proper social and leadership skills. Mentors are volunteers from within the community who commit to mentoring a student for the entire four years that they are in high school. Financial sponsors also commit to provide the tuition for a student for the students’ four years of high school. A volunteer may serve as a financial sponsor and a mentor or in some cases a financial sponsor provides the tuition support while another person provides the mentoring support.

Our students are predominantly from single parent, low-income families and consequently at risk for repeating the cycle of poverty. We provide a “hand up”, not a “hand out”, as parents are required to contribute $600 a year toward their child’s school expenses.