Founded by 11-year-old Daisy Hampton in 2020, Including You provides opportunities for peer mentorship and lasting friendship to middle and high school students around the country. Daisy was inspired to create a peer mentorship organization after witnessing the inequities in the classroom made starker by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting shift to remote learning.

Including You provides peer mentorship to middle and high school students who, whether due to disabilities or income inequality, face obstacles in their educational journeys. Including You mentors are middle and high school students themselves. Through an independent learning experience and by forging friendships, students gain confidence and social skills.

Including You mentorship sessions are all different and activities are centered around the needs and interests of the mentee. The students might work on a homework problem, bake something new, do an art project, play online checkers, or learn a TikTok dance together.

Daisy Hampton and her mom, Jennifer Hampton, had already been enjoying a relationship with a family they sponsored through The Box Project, a program of the Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi. Working through The Box Project the Hampton’s were matched with a mentoring program providing technology to implement a mentorship program pairing New York City students with student mentees from the Mississippi Delta region.

To be inclusive as possible, Including You, in partnership with The Box Project, hopes to provide an internet enabled device to any child without one participating in an Including You mentorship. Consider making a difference today in a student’s education! Click here to Donate.

Click here to learn more about The Box Project or IncludingYou.org.