X-Cel, Inc. Adult Education was founded in 2000 by two adult educators with a combined twenty years of experience in adult education, with the vision of providing quality adult education services to residents of Greater Boston. X-Cel’s mission is to make high school completion and college-level study more accessible to low-income adults in Greater Boston, by providing flexible customized instruction at no cost in convenient community locations. X-Cel Adult Education began with a volunteer and a small GED preparation class located in Roxbury. In just seven years, X-Cel has grown into a non-profit organization with 11 employees providing Pre-GED and GED classes, ESOL classes, college prep classes and computer classes at five locations throughout Boston to more than 200 adult students at any one time. Over the course of one year, we work with more than 350 adult students.

Our approach to adult education is innovative in several ways:

• Rather than offer our classes at one centralized location, X-Cel partners with neighborhood-based non-profit organizations, so that X-Cel can provide the expertise in adult education services and the neighborhood agency provides the physical space. This allows X-Cel the flexibility to provide educational services in the neighborhoods with the greatest needs and lowers our overhead costs so that a greater percentage of our funds can go directly to providing services to low-income adults.

• The majority of X-Cel’s programs operate on a rolling admissions basis. We accept new students into these classes virtually every week, so that students being released from incarceration, students on probation, or in some other immediate need of classes, do not have to wait months for the next semester to begin. They can begin classes immediately.

• Instruction in all of our classes occurs in small groups and students advance through skill levels at their own individualized paces. This increases student motivation and allows students to make the most progress in a short amount of time.

• Through our partnership with Boston Cares, X-Cel employs widespread use of volunteers to assist our instructors in math, reading and writing instruction. Every week an average of 18-25 volunteers donate anywhere from 50 to 70 hours working with our adult students. This consistent donation of time and effort enables X-Cel to provide our individualized and small group instruction in our classes and to maximize the services that we can provide with the funds that are donated to X-Cel.