TomTod Ideas

Give $10 for our 10th birthday! You believe middle schoolers matter. Join us during Bonus Week 1 (July 18th-25th) as we try to raise money for the most unique donors in order to win $5000!

Standing for tomorrow’s ideas today, we empower middle schoolers to explore and launch innovative ideas and spark positive community change. We do this through three primary programs that empower middle schoolers: week-long summer camps, school-based partnerships, and project-based mentoring.

Our Compass

Everything we do is community-based. Early Adolescents are in a critical developmental stage when they are fiercely curious about their place in the world. We aim to tap into that curiosity, directing it toward empathy and community engagement. We cultivate the altruism they're seeking by encouraging them to pursue the common good through ideas that help their community thrive. 

We are responsive to student choice, intent on helping middle schoolers develop healthy autonomy. While we develop helpful pathways for students to explore their community, they simultaneously get to follow their curiosity by working, researching, and collaborating around ideas that matter to them. 

When given the chance, middle schoolers want to help their community. We empower them to explore how they can.

Our Pathways

Human-Centered Design Thinking is prolific in a wide variety of fields to solve problems, make discoveries, and innovate processes. We take Liberatory Design Thinking models, and refine them to be developmentally appropriate to early adolescents. Translating these best practices allows students to develop creative problem solving skills they can use for the rest of their lives.

We are firm believers that students learn through doing. We build curriculum that incorporate real partners with real problems that give students real goals to work toward.

We go beyond defining skills like project management, empathy, and responsibility, and create meaningful opportunities for students to practice them.

Project-Based Implementation of SEL

Using the latest research from sources such as CASEL and Buck Institute for Education, and by collaborating with local community partners across industries such as city government, parks and recreation, libraries, small businesses, and nonprofits, we provide opportunities for students to practice SEL skills including empathy, self-awareness, responsible decision-making, and social awareness.

Student Autonomy

We honor students’ perspectives and input. While we design the framework for our projects, students lead the way. They get the opportunity to explore topics and parts of the community they’re passionate about. 

Inquiry-Based Community Connection

We cultivate curiosity in our students and provide opportunities for them to share their ideas to authentic audiences of interested community members.