MindLeaps

MindLeaps has seen that breaking this cycle and providing one student with a path to a decent living wage leads to a better chance of success. The mission of MindLeaps is to fully and completely transition underserved youth to a stable life in school or the workplace, with the readiness, determination and confidence to become independent. MindLeaps works to ensure that street children and out-of-school youth in post-conflict and developing countries go to school, enter the workplace, and create a positive impact in their communities. The organization does this by using a kinesthetic-based curriculum to improve the cognitive skills of youth. The program provides dance, computer and academic acceleration courses, daily meals, health and sanitation workshops, and counseling sessions through its holistic approach to rehabilitation.

The MindLeaps program utilizes a comprehensive core dance curriculum to develop cognitive skills and social-emotional learning, while incorporating individualized monitoring to determine when youth have reached improved levels of critical thinking.
The curriculum is built around five progressive modules, designed to meet students at their ability level, both physically and socially-emotionally. Youth join 2-hour sessions, 3 times per week, taught by highly trained instructors.
The extreme rigor of the class is one of the key reasons why students are motivated to keep returning day after day: they improve and see that, often for the first time in their lives, they are capable of self-betterment.
Over the course of each class, multiple exercises focus on seven key cognitive and noncognitive skills: self-esteem, teamwork, language, grit, discipline, memorization, and creativity.
During classes, dance teachers are able to track each student with the app. The resulting real-time analytics, viewable by teachers and organizational heads, allow staff to make critical decisions around each child’s improvement, their growth of emotional regulation, school readiness, or extra needs for attention and services.

MindLeaps works with teachers, dancers, social workers and researchers to ensure that street children are able to leap forward in life through education. The organization works with local staff in each country who are rigorously trained by MindLeaps. The organization has simultaneously started a revenue generating path to support the breadth of its impact: leveraging the data-driven dance model to serve new communities. MindLeaps is licensing our model to large international organizations and NGOs, and exploring a NYC-based program. The organization also partners with local governments and companies, including Ruben's Shoes from Canada and the local government of Guinea to distribute shoes through the interior of the country, under the official slogan, “One Pair of Shoes for Each Child". MindLeaps also has partnered with SOS Pairs Exchanges and Children of Promise to create programs in Mauritania and New York. MindLeaps works with social workers that are a part of the local staff in each country. A social worker follows the regularity of the child at school and monitors the support provided to the household.
Through MindLeaps International Artists' Fund (IAF), world renowned performers bring awareness to the needs of Rwanda's street youth. The fund works with dancers - such as Misty Copeland of American Ballet Theatre and LaMar Baylor of The Lion King - to travel to the different locations to teach youth. MindLeaps has built a measurement and evaluation system (M&E) system called "Tracker". This software measures the changes in cognitive skills and social emotional learning of youth. It is used by teachers and researchers to track and analyze the progress of the students. Teachers and analysts are then able to discuss the adjustments that need to be made in the classroom to improve the progress of the students.

Today MindLeaps operates permanent centers in Rwanda, Guinea, and Uganda which also serve as hubs for expansion of the model through partnerships with other organizations in East and West Africa and the Balkans. MindLeaps began work in Rwanda in 2010 under its former name, RDDC, and between 2011-13 partnered with FidesCo Rwanda (now Centre Cyprien et Daphrose Rugamba – CECYDAR) to administer a dance and IT program for street children in Kigali. In 2014, MindLeaps registered as an international NGO in Rwanda and expanded to operate its own permanent year-round facility in Nyamirambo, Kigali. To date, the center has served over 1,500 out-of-school and vulnerable in-school youth. In Guinea, MindLeaps and Association Benka-Fissa launched a partnership in 2011 to create dance and language/literacy training in Kindia. The program provided a safe learning environment for boys and girls ages 10 to 19 who faced poverty, lack of access to education, and unstable family lives. In 2016, MindLeaps partnered with local NGO Guinea Edugrade to offer a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) summer camp program for vulnerable youth. In 2017, MindLeaps went on to open its own center in the capital city of Conakry, providing a permanent safe space to continue its full dance and education programs year round. In 2021 MindLeaps purchased land for a new center in Guinea, which will be completed in 2022. In 2017, in Kampala, MindLeaps partnered with HIAS an international NGO facilitating the resettlement of refugees around the world, to work with urban refugee children. In 2021, MindLeaps opened its first center in Uganda, located in Kampala. In addition, MindLeaps serves children in Oruchinga and Rwamwanja Refugee Settlements in Uganda. MindLeaps partnered with SOS Pairs Educateurs in Nouakchott in 2017 to run its first program in Mauritania. In 2019, an expanded program was funded by Together Women Rise (togetherwomenrise.org). In 2021, the Mauritania program received support from the US Embassy to launch programs to reduce poverty and promote inclusion through the advancement of girls, women, and collaborative activities among ethnic groups. With COVID-19 suspending classes for thousands of MindLeaps students, MindLeaps created the Virtual Academy to help them continue their education. The Virtual Academy teaches concepts such as entrepreneurship, communication, project management and budgeting, child development, and inclusion. Through the Virtual Academy, MindLeaps taught basic skills to give students a competitive edge as well as kept connections with students to ensure they did not relapse in such a difficult time. In its next level of expansion, MindLeaps received seed funding to launch a USA program in 2022.