Help 4,000 DC Youth Find Their Voice

Thanks to the donations provided through donors at GlobalGiving, 826DC is continuing to help children and youth in the District of Columbia improve their writing and reading skills, use their imagination, and find their voice. We hosted 81 field trips this school year, held 37 writing workshops for 545 students, and provided drop-in tutoring and writing help to 66 children and youth. With the help of a dedicated group of interns and thousands of volunteers, we kept students engaged and excited through the end of the school year.

Our after-school tutoring program consistently held an average daily attendance of 35 to 40 students, many of whom attended four days per week. Our volunteers implemented individualized learning plans designed during the first part of the academic year, and successfully adjusted those plans as the students make progress. Reading All Stars, our Saturday one-on-one reading program at Tubman Elementary School, served 87 students who read with their tutors and received help with reading and writing skills. We hosted 81 field trips for nearly than 1900 students from 15 different schools (including Tubman ES, SEED PCS, Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, DC Bilingual PCS, Washington Yu-Ying PCS, and Center City PCS, and more). During our field trips, a class of students visits our center to write their a collaborative book in two hours with the aid of our talented volunteers. Each student wrote his or her own ending to the story and took home a copy of the finished product.

Our in-school sessions were also in high demand. This school year, we worked with Cesar Chavez Public Charter School (Parkside Campus) on essay writing skills, Woodrow Wilson HS on National Novel Writing Month, Capital City PCS on Food Writing, and more. The Capital City PCS food writing in-school resulted in a publication of recipes and corresponding food narratives. In addition, we wrapped up the sixth iteration of our flagship program, the Young Authors’ Book Project. We worked with a creative writing class at The SEED School of Washington on a poetry anthology titled, Everyone is Moving, No One in Place with a forward written by award-winning poet, Kyle Dargan. The book was released May 29th. All told, we served than 3,369 children and youth during the 2013-14 school year.

Our summer programming will include more workshops to help combat summer learning loss for children across the District. We are continuing our aggressive fundraising strategy in the coming months, as well. We recently hired our first Director of Development to ensure the resources for our planned programmatic growth and to reach more children. 

Links:

• http://www.826dc.org