Our story
BrightUp Kids began with a group of parents, educators, and researchers who kept noticing the same gap: plenty of enrichment exists for young children, but very little of it is bilingual and genuinely built for families learning together.
What started as a handful of Mandarin story sessions at a local library has grown into a set of programs running across the MetroWest area and the Bay Area — story time, language classes, a travelling book exchange, and a parent–child reading club.
We remain small and volunteer-driven by design. It keeps us close to the families we serve.
We are also research-led. The board that governs us includes a professor, a Director of Empirical Research, and several PhDs, and that lens shapes how every program is designed. In 2026 that work took a name of its own: BrightUp Institute, our research division.
