To help pay Summerbridge’s operating costs, the objectives of Celebration were themselves expanded this year to include garnering publicity and funding.

In the past, Celebration was designed for an audience of mainly parents and other relatives. This year, the event was publicized to help spread awareness of the Summerbridge program, development intern Sara E. Di Bonaventura ’05 said.

“We’ve existed for 13 years and still not everyone knows about it—which I think is a crime,” she said.

Di Bonaventura added that she and the office staff made multiple attempts, including mail invitations and telephone follow-up calls to Cambridge residents, to attract attention to Celebration.

In addition, a new fund raising objective was added to this year’s Celebration. Zolesk said since May, he has been attempting to gain sponsorship for the event from local retail outlets, businesses and law firms.

“We’re trying to contact corporations that you can call one day and speak to the owner the next,” Zolesk said.

Zolesk said he felt compelled to ask for sponsorship money—in exchange for which Summerbridge could guarantee advertising at the event—rather than donations because businesses tended to want an added incentive to give with the poor state of the economy.

Ticket-holders to last night’s program were also asked to donate to Summerbridge.

Both development interns remarked that until their duties commenced this summer, they had never appreciated the ties between the workers of a non-profit organization and those working behind the scenes to fund them.

“You can’t do any development unless the teachers are amazing—and well-funded,” Di Bonaventura said.

STUDENT TEACHERS

Summerbridge does not only cater to the students, but to the needs of the teachers as well, Mead said. The program goes out of its way to hire high school and college students who are seriously considering teaching careers. By the time the teachers complete a full summer of designing and implementing curricula, they should have a much better sense of their career goals, Mead said.

Mead said the competition to become a teacher in the program is far more intense than that to become enrolled as a student. This summer, over 300 people applied for 28 teaching positions.

Di Bonaventura, who was on the Summerbridge faculty admissions committee this year, said the applicants had to possess several qualities beyond the desire to teach to be accepted to the program.

“Individually, we were looking for people who are incredibly motivated and dedicated to education, people who have a very sincere interest in children,” she said. “We’re looking for what understanding they have of middle school students, in terms of what interests them and what their problems are.”