FiDi Cafeteria Becomes After-Hours Tutoring Hub for Helping Kids

Two By Two tutors and their students work in 55 Water Street's spacious cafeteria. Without the use of the space, donated by the building's management company, the program could not exist. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

Twice a week, hours after the markets have closed for the day and legions of Wall Street workers have hurried home, the doors are open and the lights still on in the ground floor cafeteria at 55 Water Street. There, 125 volunteers, most of them Wall Street professionals from Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and other nearby financial institutions will spend 90 minutes tutoring youngsters aged 8 to 18, many of whom have taken long subway rides for this free help. They sit, heads together, pencils in hand, poring over algebra problems, parsing complicated reading passages, struggling over lists of vocabulary words.

"She's gone up a level in reading," Ornit Niv, CEO at the online trading firm FXCM, said proudly of her student, 8-year-old Mimoza Kulla, who comes to the program with her two older siblings. Mimoza's mother works upstairs as a night cleaning woman.

"I think it's fun," Momoza chimed in. "I can read longer words now."

The volunteers, who have made a year's commitment to work with their students, are part of Two By Two Tutoring, run by Bonnie Lichtman, 61, an unassuming woman whose faith in the power of volunteerism runs deep.

"When commerce and community get together in the service of children," Lichtman likes to say, "great things happen."

She should know. For 10 years Lichtman headed a similar program on Wall Street run by JCCA, the social service organization for children. Over the years, she saw struggling students go on to college and even medical school. Others, who would surely have dropped out of high school, succeeded in graduating. But the program lost its funding in January and Lichtman was laid off.

"When the program ended, the CEO of FXCM asked me, 'What's going to happen to the kids?'" Lichtman recalled. "And Deutsche Bank wanted to know, too, and then someone said to me, 'Well, maybe you can start something.'''

By the time the school year was underway, Two By Two had opened, with free office space supplied by FXCM and the cafeteria space donated by 55 Water Street's management.

The program began in September with 55 students. As the non-profit's sole employee, Lichtman evaluated each of them, then prepared him or her with individualized educational plans. She also recruits tutors, organizes fundraisers, writes grants, and meets with Wall Street firms who she hopes will become their partners. On weekends, she spends hours searching online for free educational materials for the program.  

"I think about it seven days a week, day and night," Lichtman cheerfully admits. "The nonprofit world is very competitive. Sometimes I'm still working in my pajamas on the weekend and it's two in the afternoon, and I'll say to myself, 'This is not good.'"

With a growing number of volunteer tutors, Lichtman is hoping to reach 100 kids next year. (To be accepted, students must be a year behind in either reading or math or have other educational needs.) Some of the tutors are substitutes and others "share" a student every other week. High school students come a second night for SAT and math prep.  

"Our tutors are not just tutors," Lichtman said. "They're role models. They're mentors. They break the myth that some of our kids have about college which is that they can't go. Some of the girls come in and say, 'Oh, I'm going to work in a supermarket or do nails and hair,' and we'll say, 'Maybe you can do something else?'"

Brendan Meyer, who works in the bond department of Deutsche Bank, has tutored eight students over the past five years. He agrees that he has provided more than just academic help to the kids.

"It's an opportunity for them to act one-on-one with an adult who is not a family member," Meyer noted. "We can help them figure out how they fit in the world. How to interact with older people, and to see how education makes them into a well-rounded human being."

"These volunteers are representative of many who want to give back," Lichtman said. "A lot of people do New York Cares, they will plant trees or paint something, a one-shot deal. But it takes a very special person to make a commitment for one year."

Tutors, she said, often thank her for the opportunity to work with their students. And parents are even more grateful.

"The parents know that education is so important, but they cannot help their children," Lichtman said. "They don't have education, or they speak another language, or they have multiple children and are working."

And certainly, none could ever afford the cost of a private tutor.

"It would be a lot harder for him without this," said Dolly Smith, who was waiting for her 8-year-old grandson, Joseph Francis, to finish with his tutor. "It's a blessing."

For more information, go to twobytwotutoring.org [1].