At home or abroad, buildOn's mission is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and low expectations through service and education. Across the U.S., buildOn empowers urban youth to transform their neighborhoods through intensive community service and to change the world by building schools in some of the economically poorest countries in the world.

In the U.S., buildOn runs service learning programs in some of the lowest performing urban high schools in the Bay Area, Boston, Bridgeport CT, Chicago, Detroit and New York City. Globally, buildOn is breaking ground every two days on new schools in developing countries, including Burkina Faso, Haiti, Malawi, Mali, Nepal, Nicaragua and Senegal. Since 1991, buildOn has empowered more than 2 million hours of youth service in the U.S. and has constructed 1,300 schools worldwide, with more than 160,000 children and adults attending these schools every day.