PC: Connect Me
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close, high school student Mehmet Tascioglu decided to act about the disruption students were facing. On October 19, 2020, he helped start Connect Me with a small group of volunteers, offering free tutoring to just 15 students in the Metro-Detroit area. Five years later, the student-run nonprofit says it has delivered more than 60,000 free tutoring sessions, involving more than 600 volunteers and reaching 43 states and 12 countries. The website has helped more than 600 volunteers deliver over 60,000 free tutoring sessions, reaching students in 43 states and 12 countries. The organisation started with a small group of high-school students trying to help 15 learners in their local community during an unprecedented disruption to education. Its stated plans for 2026 and beyond suggest that the organisation sees its first five years not as an endpoint, but as the beginning of a much longer effort to support students through free education.
Because of how modest its beginnings were, the scale of Connect Me’s growth is striking.
The organisation’s growth has also brought national recognition, including NBC’s “Making a Difference” Award in 2021 and a “Be More” Grant from the National Society of High School Scholars in 2024. Connect Me also received the “Be More” Grant from the National Society of High School Scholars in November 2024. The organisation says the grant recognised its innovation, leadership and commitment to educational equity and excellence.
The idea was simple: give students access to reliable academic support at a time when normal classroom learning had been thrown into uncertainty. What began as a small local effort quickly grew far beyond southeast Michigan. After gaining attention from local media, Connect Me expanded its volunteer network, developed training and leadership programmes and began reaching students across the US and other countries. Connect Me describes itself as the largest student-run tutoring nonprofit organisation in the United States, while its mission remains rooted in the same principle that inspired its creation: helping students access education without the cost of traditional tutoring. Five years after its founding, the small tutoring initiative had become the largest student-run tutoring nonprofit organisation in the United States. Five years later, the same student-led model had developed into an international volunteer network. Connect Me’s mission remains centred on making tutoring accessible while continuing to expand its services.
