Support UPO's Foster Grandparents Program

During the fall of 2020 UPO Foster Grandparents assisted in the distribution of 649 tablets to students at Elementary schools provided by the CARES Act to support remote learning. They also assisted in the preparation of hundreds of remote learning materials and supplies bags for their students at Elementary Schools, essential to support their remote learning, purchased with the funds raised with your help in during our September 2020 Little by Little Campaign.

Foster Grandparents will continue to support learning in CARE classrooms at 5 schools. This program is example of our commitment to maximize learning. In these small-group classrooms, students have supervised care for the school day from a Foster Grandparent, a caring adult who is not their teacher. Students will have the benefit of being with their peers at school but will participate in lessons virtually with their teacher on a computer. Foster Grandparents will also continue to serve in the recently implemented Reading Partners remote program which pairs Foster Grandparent remotely with individual students to complete specialized educational activities to enhance reading, comprehension and vocabulary skills. This tailored approach will become increasingly important as students return to the classrooms for assessments on their reading and comprehension. 

Our Foster Grandparents Program (FGP) is positioning to address new strategies in education to deal with the significant loss of student competencies during the pandemic.  We will seek to provide computer literacy to enable Foster Grandparents to serve in the classroom and participate in remote learning to address student educational deficiencies. We will also provide training on how COVID lock downs has impacted social emotional development of the children they serve.  Foster Grandparent will be trained on managing the common behavioral problems resulting from the impact on the education and home life.  This training is essential to their productivity with children one on one and in small groups.

The FGP is in need of support to address the digital divide impact on low-income communities and schools.  DC public schools have developed a strategic 5 year plan to provide 30% of in-school instruction on computers and the current approaches which augment in-school instruction with remote learning.   We must provide every Foster Grandparent with computer literacy and basic knowledge of educational software to meet our mandate to serve the children of the District of Columbia. 

UPO’s Foster Grandparents Program needs to raise funds to equip our Foster Grandparents for the important task ahead. We are seeking funding for the purchase of 50 laptops, 150 Headphones to support remote mentoring, 150 computer bags to store laptops and headphones, 15 hours of computer literacy training per Foster Grandparent, Social / emotional training, binders, written materials and mailings for Foster Grandparents and Data Cards for monthly WIFI access for Foster Grandparents.

Now IS the time. Together, we’ll make your dollars go further:

GlobalGiving’s Little by Little Matching Campaign runs from 09:00:00 ET on Monday March 8, 2021, to 23:59:59 ET on Friday, March 12, 2021. During the Little by Little campaign, all eligible donations up to $50 will be matched at 50%!

Your generous support of UPO’s Foster Grandparents Program NOW, will help us meet our project goal of raising the critical funds needed to provide our Foster Grandparents with computer literacy,