CINCINNATI — One group is taking a different approach to schooling. They’re bringing the classroom straight to the students and turning RVs into a way to help students at risk. 

What You Need To Know

  • Volunteers and educators with the 'NEST' program out of Cincinnati have seven RVs that they turn into classrooms during the school year 

  • The mobile classrooms go to low-income neighborhoods and set up shop to tutor and help students with homework 

  • Organizers are also planning an event with other nonprofits where families can connect with resources to help kids all in one area

For many students, it’s the last days of summer camp, but for Evangeline DeVol, it’s just the beginning. After summer camp, she and her team take seven RVs and turn them all into classrooms.

Once school starts, she says they take the mobile classrooms to the kids in low-income neighborhoods throughout the greater Cincinnati area. Then, volunteers provide tutoring and homework help.

“We know that if they do have a good education, they’re going to stay in school, that they’re going to find the places, their niche, if you will, the things that make their heart sing and they dream about,” said DeVol.

It’s all a part of a program called NEST: Nutrition, Education, Safety and Transformation, a program she leads after being a long-time teacher herself.

“My first teaching assignment was in a very low-income part of Prince George’s County outside Washington, D.C. it was a different kind of low income. It was drugs and alcohol in prison and things like that. So it was a different facet of why these kids were in low-income situations,” said DeVol.

She said they’ve now helped hundreds of at-risk grade schoolers in the eight years doing mobile education in Ohio, but there’s another problem.

“We saw so many of our kids, for one reason or another, removed from their homes and placed into foster care, and then they were brought back after 18 months or whatever happens, and these kids were worse off academically,” said DeVol.

That’s why now she’s starting another venture to help.

She’s teaming up with other nonprofit groups and planning an event she’s calling ‘Children of a Perfect Storm’ where families can find help in one place.

“All of our kids that we work with have storms in their life, storms of trauma, neglect, poverty is a storm, all this stuff,” said DeVol, “We got the idea from that is to say let’s come to the table and let’s be one really strong voice so that people make some noise so people can’t ignore what’s going on with children literally in their own backyard,” she said. 

The ‘Children of a Perfect Storm’ event is scheduled for Friday, August 25th. It’s set to occur at the Oakley Kitchen from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

For more information on that event and the NEST program, click here. 

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