College Preparation for Disadvantaged Students

Darfur Women Network, Inc., (DWN) is grateful for your support and generosity. Our partnership with GlobalGiving and the support of Microsoft’s YouthSpark fund have made a huge impact on DWN.

This past June, GlobalGiving gave me the opportunity to attend the Social Impact Academy at no cost. As project leaders at DWN, my colleagues and I learned better ways to use resources to improve the effectiveness of the DWN programs. 

We now are able to recruit professional volunteers to help take DWN to the next level of our mission, which is to raise public awareness and provide educational programs for refugee women, girls and families displaced by the Darfur conflict. With the help of these programs, Darfur families may re-establish personal empowerment and re-build their previously flourishing communities. 

I am so thrilled to share with you that DWN has partnered with Butler University to tutor Darfur immigrant families and their children. As part of Butler’s religion studies program, students participate in community engagement. Ten students have volunteered to help DWN with tutoring in a variety of educational areas, including Math (Algebra I & II, Geometry, and Calculus); English (Reading, Writing, and Adult Conversation); and SAT preparation (Critical Reading and Thinking, and Writing). 

This partnership promises to create a strong, positive connection between the Butler University community and the Darfur immigrant families that we serve. 

Also, DWN is grateful to our volunteers who created our social media sites, which launched September 1, 2015. I invite you to visit our social media sites, “Like” us on Facebook, and send us your feedback on ways to improve our work. Please share our links with your friends and networks to help us raise awareness for our mission and reach out to more supporters. 

Here are the links to our campaign:

Website: http://darfurwomennetwork.org

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DarfurWomenNetwork 

Twitter https://twitter.com/we_women

 Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/HopeforDarfur/

 Instagram https://instagram.com/darfurwomennetwork

 LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/darfur-women-network/

 Google+ https://plus.google.com/+DarfurwomennetworkOrg/about/www.darfurwomennetwork.org

We shared with you this past July that we handed over the SAT preparation to the MTI School of Knowledge. However, we discovered that our students need additional intensive intervention in Math (Calculus, Algebra I and II) and English (Critical Reading and Thinking, Writing). Please visit https://goto.gg/15358 for more information about this program.

We, Darfur Women Network, Inc., (DWN) are so thrilled to reach out to you after our last report in April to thank you for your strong support, your commitment, and your generous donation. We are grateful for our partnership with GlobalGiving and the support of Microsoft’s YouthSpark fund.

As we share with you that we handed over the SAT course to School of MTI School of knowledge to handle the SAT for two reasons: the course is very expensive exceeded our annual budget for the entire DWN and is needed to be instructed by experts to help students to achieve their academic goal.

Now, we are focusing on helping students by teaching those subjects that they are not performing well on them. We found that students are in need to be helped with subjects like Math, English –specifically critical reading and thinking, writing, and vocabulary before taking SAT by professionals.

We learned from the SAT test that was instructed by experts and organized by MTI School, that students performed poorly. When I reviewed some results’ report and talked to some for them to sense the reasons behind their poor performance, I found that they need to focus more on the courses we provide before taking SAT preparation course. Also, they need to take the SAT course in summer not during school to focus on their preparation rather than focus on school and their homework in addition to SAT.

It was learning experience, we learned from the first course that we need to give assessment test to our students first to determine their level of knowledge in each subject and help them to improve before SAT preparation. Also, lack of fund and depending on volunteers all of our activities is very challenging.

Thank you again for listen to us and we are ready to listen to you feedback your advice, volunteering to help us to achieve our goals.