Pearl, a Richmond company behind an all-in-one tutor management platform, is partnering with the Urban League chapters of Greater Richmond and Hampton Roads on a program that will employ hundreds of students at four historically Black colleges and universities as tutors and mentors to middle and high school students.
Pearl said it will initially support tutoring for nearly 1,500 students in the Hampton City School District and Petersburg City Public Schools over the next two years with plans to expand the program to schools in Richmond and “other districts in underserved communities.”
The participating HBCUs include Norfolk State University, Hampton University, Virginia State University and Virginia Union University.
The program has earned the endorsement of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who said in a statement the initiative is “the kind of collaborative, inventive partnership we want to see across the commonwealth to support our students.”
Last year, Pearl closed a seed round of more than $4 million with new investments from Blu Venture Investors, Fidi Ventures and others. The company, led by CEO and co-founder John Failla, said it would use the new money for talent development, expansion and the creation of new data and reporting engines. Formerly known as Trilogy Mentors, the 7-year-old company offers a proprietary software-as-a-service platform for educators to launch and scale a branded, relationship-based online learning program. The company has grown as the Covid-19 pandemic has rattled the education field, with many school districts bringing on tutors with the aim of mitigating learning loss and the impacts of the ongoing national teacher shortage.
“Community-based tutoring is proving to be a sustainable modality to support both social-emotional learning and academic outcomes,” Failla said in a statement. “We are especially excited about being able to serve the students across our home state of Virginia."
