Youth Mentorship
The HigherSelf youth program pairs young people in Newark with adults who stay — one-on-one mentoring for ages 12 to 24, academic support and college readiness, leadership and civic engagement, and creative arts programming with working artists. Free or low-cost, like everything we run.
Who it’s for
Young people in Newark between 12 and 24, and the parents, guardians, teachers, and coaches looking for someone to walk alongside them. A young person can reach out for themselves. So can an adult on their behalf. There is no wrong door.
What the program includes
- One-on-one mentoring for ages 12–24
- Academic support and college readiness
- Leadership development and civic engagement
- Creative arts programming with working artists
How it works
Reach out through the Get Help form or by texting YOUTH to (888) 893-7838. A HigherSelf coordinator follows up, learns what the young person actually wants, and matches them with a mentor and the programming that fits — academic support, leadership work, the summer program, or time with working artists.
Mentors are screened before they are matched, and matches are supported after they are made.
Programs for young people
Youth Summer Enrichment. The summer program runs academics, arts, and leadership through the break.
Literacy Champions. HigherSelf Literacy Champions pairs volunteers with young readers.
Watch
The people who got this right were never talking down to anybody. These are worth the time.
- Curated
Mister Rogers Asks Yo-Yo Ma What He Plays When He Is Angry
Rogers asks whether, as a child, Yo-Yo Ma ever played happy things or sad things or angry things just because he wanted to. Ma answers by playing. The Swan for the peaceful, tranquil mood, and then the piece he gets into when the feeling is anger, digging in with all his strength until a lot of frustration is gone. Ma posted it forty years to the day after the episode first aired, thanking PBS for Fred’s vision and noting that three generations of his family grew up on it.
Via Yo-Yo Ma on TikTok
- Curated
LeVar Burton and the First Reading Rainbow
Reading Rainbow began with an episode called “Tight Times.” LeVar Burton spent the years after it handing books to children and telling them the books were theirs. Literacy at HigherSelf traces to this work.
Via Buffalo Toronto Public Media on TikTok
- Curated
PBS Did Its Job
A voice actor’s list of what 90s PBS quietly installed in the children who watched it. A Jack Russell terrier taught you Faust and the Odyssey and Frankenstein before you were ten, so you recognize the manipulation when someone recycles it. LeVar Burton told you not to take his word for it, so you check sources and ask who funded the study. Mister Rogers talked to you about social issues as though you could handle the truth, so you do not need information wrapped in bubble wrap now. You spent childhood chasing a woman in a red trench coat across the globe on context clues, so you cannot watch anything without asking what they are not showing you. The verdict, delivered as a joke that is not entirely a joke: impossible to lie to, exhausting to watch movies with.
Via Tawny Platis on TikTok
- Curated
Why Kids Cannot Read in 2026
The literacy numbers are in the news, and this is an argument about what sits underneath them. Education has been defunded, and large technology companies have taken the classroom as a frontier for profit. The other half is what left: passive, freely available educational programming from the public sector. Cyberchase and WordGirl and Super Why gave way to Cocomelon and Paw Patrol, and the new shows are written down to children. The sharpest point is about why the old ones were good in the first place. Parents used to watch television alongside their kids, so a show had to work for the child and the adult at once, and that constraint is what made it worth watching.
Via Michael Fadugbagbe on TikTok
- Curated
Geometry of Circles — the Sesame Street Animation Philip Glass Scored
Six colored circles split apart and reform into geometric patterns, set to music Philip Glass wrote in 1979 after animator Cathryn Aison commissioned him from her storyboard. It was made as a primer for visual thinking, and it scans like the Dance numbers he was writing around Einstein on the Beach at the time. Sesame Street put minimalist composition in front of children on a weekday afternoon and trusted them with it. It later hung in the Museum of Modern Art.
Via sir_moose_a_lot on TikTok
- Curated
A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk, and a Stick of Butter
A mother sends her daughter to the store and offers to write the list down. The girl says she does not need it: I remember. Then she walks the block holding the three items in her head, loses them at the counter, gets them back, and comes home saying it again. The sketch is doing something quieter than a memory drill. It hands a Black girl the whole segment, lets her be competent in it, and ends with her mother telling her she has a good memory.
Via sir_moose_a_lot on TikTok
- Curated
Everybody Sleeps
Footage of animals asleep, one after another, a camel lying flat in the dirt with its head down. No lesson is stated and none needs to be. Everybody sleeps, so whatever else is true of you, that much is shared with a camel.
Via LittleJerryFan92 on YouTube
- Curated
They’re Not Alive
A girl works through what is alive and what is not, outdoors, holding a rock in one hand and a twig in the other and sorting the world into the two piles. It is the first cut a person ever makes in biology, handed to a child young enough to still be deciding what counts.
Via sesamestreet66 on YouTube
- Curated
The Power Is Yours
Five kids, five rings — earth, fire, wind, water, and heart — and when their powers combine they summon a hero who is the planet standing up for itself. Captain Planet ran from 1990 to 1996 and gave a generation villains it could name: pollution, poaching, clear-cutting, waste. What it refused to do was let the hero keep the win — every episode closed with Captain Planet handing the fight back to the children watching: “The Power Is Yours.” That line is the whole idea of environmental education in four words — the planet’s condition is not someone else’s job.
Via nestalgiarecall on TikTok
- Curated
Climate Change 101
Bill Nye lays out the basics without the noise: the planet has warmed more than a degree in the last century, 97 percent of climate scientists agree the cause this time is human, and the greenhouse gases behind it come from how we now live. It is the plain-language version of what Captain Planet dramatized — the mechanism, named, for anyone still deciding whether the problem is real.
Via National Geographic on YouTube
Resources
Mentoring next steps. Start with the Get Help form or text YOUTH to (888) 893-7838 to reach a coordinator, then work toward a mentor match and the programming that fits.
Want to mentor? Volunteers are what make the match possible. Say so through the Get Help form, or start with Literacy Champions.
More to watch. The full Video Library collects everything we have gathered, filterable by topic.
Need something else in the community? Browse the Newark Resources directory for housing, food, legal, and other free or low-cost support across the city. You can also text your ZIP code to (888) 893-7838 for the closest organizations.
Urgent, or want to help a neighbor? Visit Mutual Aid to request or offer direct support.
Looking for a mentor, or want to be one? Text YOUTH to (888) 893-7838 or use the Get Help form. A real person responds within one business day.