49ers star Arik Armstead makes another big donation to help Sacramento-area students
49ers star defensive lineman Arik Armstead will make another substantial investment aimed at helping underserved youth in Sacramento through the Armstead Academic Project, The Bee has learned.
Armstead, a Elk Grove native and Pleasant Grove High School alum, continued his outreach by putting another $250,000 toward the implementation of the Armstead Academy, which is scheduled to be announced Monday afternoon before the 49ers take on the Los Angeles Rams.
The contribution aims to elevate the program that took a foothold in the community in recent years to advance education equity to underserved youth in the Sacramento area, particularly students of color in communities that don’t receive the same resources as others. Armstead will continue to work with Mercy Housing to identify 300 students in need and implement the new programs.
“I feel like we’re doing more and more every year. Serving better and better each year,” Armstead told The Bee. “And I’m really excited about our plan for this year and how we plan to help create change and impact these young people’s lives.”
The plan is broaden the scope of after school and summer programming that supplement educations students are already getting. In total, there are four new branches of the program designed to help students of different ages.
The emphasis for elementary students will be reading and will include one-on-one summer reading programs for students with credentialed teachers, as well as continuing the “story time” series when Armstead and others read to students and give away books. The program will be implemented at Leataata Floyd Elementary in Land Park.
The focus for middle school students will be STEAM, offering a chance for students to explore non-school subjects like engineering, coding and robotics. These programs will run through Leataata Floyd while partnering with UC Davis.
A hundred high school students will have opportunities to take tours of colleges, such as UC Berkeley, UC Davis and Sacramento State, and connect with local business to learn about possible careers after high school. The program is also partnering with Zenni Optical to provide vision assessments for students who wouldn’t normally get checked to see if they need glasses.
The Armstead Academic Project has also grown through new hires. Armstead over the summer hired Aila Malik, a founder of the Venture Leadership Consulting, to be an interim executive director. She’ll work with Armstead, and his wife, Mindy, until a permanent director is hired in 2023.
“I love working with Arik and Mindy,” Malik said. “They are truly philanthropic and they really care deeply about kids, and making direct impact. They’re really passionate about education equity and that a zip code shouldn’t define the kind of experience and opportunity that kids have to explore their future goals and achieve them. And so their focus is really supporting the education inside the classroom and outside the classroom with supplementary experiences.”
The long-term goal, Armstead said, is to create a brick-and-mortar hub for the Armstead Academy. This week’s contribution lifts the Armstead Academic Project’s total to $450,000 toward advancing education equity to underserved students.
This story was originally published October 3, 2022 at 8:25 AM.
