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 118 field trips last school year for 2,264 students, held 70 writing workshops for 611 students, provided In-School Writing & Publishing programming for 1,472 students, and provided drop-in tutoring and writing help to 40 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 25 to 30 students, many of whom attend four days per week. Our volunteers implement individualized learning plans designed during the first part of the academic year, and are successfully adjusting those plans as the students make progress. Reading All-Stars, our Saturday one-on-one reading program at Tubman Elementary School, is serving more than 100 students who read with their tutors and receive help with reading and writing skills. We provide hundreds of field trips for nearly 2300 students from over 30 different schools (including Tubman ES, SEED PCS, Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, DC Bilingual PCS, Washington Yu-Ying PCS, 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 writes his or her own ending to the story and take home a copy of the finished product.

Our in-school sessions are also in high demand. Last school year, we worked with Capital City Public Charter School on essay writing skills and Food Writing, and more. We conducted a four-week Meet the Writers series during the National Novel Writing Month of November at Woodrow Wilson High School. In addition, we released our seventh iteration of our flagship program, the Young Authors’ Book Project. All told, we served more than 4,400 children and youth during the 2014-15 school year. We project to serve 5,000 during this (2015-2016) year.

Our summer programming included 29 workshops with over 300 students 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 have added 2 additional staff members this year through the AmeriCorps program, as well as one additional full-time programs coordinator.

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