Draper Richards Foundation

Spark
Chris Balme
Fellowship Awarded 2008

Spark's innovative youth apprenticeship model turns workplaces into learning spaces, helping youth see the positive applications and potential of their education. Spark's growing youth programs create hands-on, one-on-one apprenticeships for middle-school youth in real workplaces. As students work side-by-side with professionals in fields from architecture to zoology, they connect their interests with their education, and see that school is the vehicle for their dreams.

Chris Balme is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Spark. As a teacher, Chris saw that middle-school students begin to ask what their futures have in store for them, and engage with school to the extent that it seems relevant to their lives. He saw that apprenticeships have the potential to create relevance, excitement, and personal vision for students, and co-founded Spark to re-introduce apprenticeships as an effective learning model for the 21st century. Since 2004, Spark's programs have grown rapidly in the San Francisco Bay Area, and are poised to help communities around the United States in the coming years.

To learn more or become involved, visit www.sparkprogram.org.

We don't know who we are until we see what we can do--Martha Grimes