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It’s as familiar as the sounds of the coffee maker brewing and the tinny, computer-amplified voices of our colleagues: the ambient noise of children in the background on Zoom calls, sometimes softly hushed, sometimes a blast of “Can you please just be quiet for five minutes!” but we forgot to mute ourselves first.
During the chaos that was the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Isabel Kalaycioglu heard those sounds while her mother was on conference calls and thought “I could maybe help with that.”
The Université de Montréal med student was already an experienced tutor, so she launched into action with CARI, the COVID Academic Relief Initiative. She put together a small program and imagined she could run classes for a few days a week. When she posted to Facebook parenting groups that she was available for tutoring sessions, 80 families reached out.
“The first week I had only me and a student friend,” 24-year-old Kalaycioglu said in an interview. She rolled with it, messaging student groups next. Within the week, she had more than 20 volunteers from universities around Montreal who were ready to tutor in English or French. CARI entered the new year with around 280 students and 35 tutors, and Kalaycioglu is recruiting more.
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