American Indian Services

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American Indian Services is a national 501(c)(3) public charity headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT. The organization also goes by its acronym, AIS. American Indian Services helps Native American students by providing them with scholarships and educational programs. They also occasionally provide special projects to help tribal citizens with emergency needs. Charity Navigator gave AIS the overall rating of 92.94.

Information

American Indian Services was established in 1981 as a 501(c)(3) public charity, by founder Dale Tingey. The main programs of AIS include the American Indian Services Scholarship Program, and AIS PREP.

The American Indian Services Scholarship Program provides scholarships to Native American students seeking an undergraduate degree, including technical and professional degrees. The awards are based on the amount of the student’s tuition. Students are awarded quarterly. The organization reports that it is difficult for them to say the exact the amount of scholarships they have distributed due to their filing system only becoming paperless in 2012, but their estimate is over 30,000.

AIS PREP is a STEAM summer school for Native American middle schoolers living on remote Indian reservations. Students who have just graduated 6th grade are eligible to attend their first year, and the program extends over the three summers before students enter 9th grade. Each summer students attend the school for 6 weeks with the goals of improving student performance in math and science, exposing students to STEM careers, improving student attitudes toward STEM subjects, and preparing them for college.

American Indians only account for 1% of students attending college, and just 13.6% of American Indians 25 years of age have a bachelor's degree, compared to 29.3% of the overall population. Poverty is the main reason so few American Indians go to college, with 28.3% of the American Indian and Alaska Natives living below the poverty level compared to 15.5% of the overall population.

According to the 2014 Native Youth Report from the Executive Office of the President, Twenty-two percent of Native fourth graders and 17 percent of Native eighth graders scored at the “proficient” or “advanced” levels in math in 2011. Nationally, 40 percent of fourth graders and 35 percent of eighth graders scored in this range. The American Indian Services Scholarship Program and AIS PREP were created to help address these disparities.

Mission and Rankings

The mission of AIS is to “provide education to Native Americans in need through scholarships and programs while ensuring that their cultural values are preserved.”

Native American cultures are endangered. 174 known Native languages in the U.S. alone have become extinct and more than 130 languages are endangered of becoming extinct by the year 2050. American Indian Services reports on its website that “AIS believes that it is through education that Native Americans will be able to protect their history. Our goal and hope is that as Natives achieve individual success they’ll be better able to provide support for their communities and positive change for future generations.”

American Indian Services has received top ratings from independent charity evaluators. It earned the Best in America Seal of Excellence from America's Best Charities. American Indian Services received a gold rating from GuideStar,<refhttps://www.guidestar.org/profile/87-0477049></ref> and a four-star rating from Charity Navigator.

References

This article "American Indian Services" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:American Indian Services. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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