The MICROSOCIETY® program involves students in the design and management of their own society and integrates their experience into the schools’ curriculum throughout the day. Using their MICROSOCIETY program as a laboratory, students explore many of the financial, physical and environmental challenges we face today – in miniature. By connecting school to life, more than 250,000 children in 40 states have reaped the benefits from the approach.
Through our partnership, OppenheimerFunds is helping MICROSOCIETY further expand and support its programs at the K-8 level through regional clusters and marketing efforts. The main goals of this reorganization project include expanding the number of schools in the Northeast region of the United States that implement MICROSOCIETY programs -- creating “ambassador schools” to serve as program role models in the area -- and strengthening existing MICROSOCIETY schools via community partnerships. By building a strong regional network of MICROSOCIETY schools, OppenheimerFunds’ support will help MICROSOCIETY deliver more robust, long-term and integrated programs that will have a lasting effect on the communities they serve.
In 2008, MICROSOCIETY was also recognized as the feature partner at our 2008 Volunteer Appreciation Event, an annual event to honor all our employee volunteers for the important work they do. As the highlighted organization, MICROSOCIETY demonstrated the effectiveness of their programming through three speakers. Current students Luisa Castilla, Mayor of her MICROSOCIETY program community, and Luis Diaz, a fourth grader managing his own art design business at his school and Sally Chonn, a Micro alumnus, all shared how the MICROSOCIETY program affects their outlook on learning, helps them daily with their school work and in understanding where they fit in society and how people in a community come together to make it function successfully.
Cited by the U.S. Department of Education for its impressive results in helping disadvantaged children achieve academic success, the MICROSOCIETY program has been shown also to dramatically improve attendance and behavior. For more information on MICROSOCIETY, visit their website at www.microsociety.org.
A unique educational program, MicroSociety® encourages students to take an active role in their education by applying their classroom learning to real-life experiences. MicroSociety programs create a microcosm within the school where each student has a role in running the society through jobs such as small business owners, bankers or government officials.
