After School Programs
Our after-school programs offer a safe haven, educational enrichment, nutritious meals, and mentoring by caring adults. Tutoring and homework help give children a chance to catch up to grade level, fill gaps in fundamental academic skills, and improve grades and standardized test scores. Opportunities for our children to explore secondary subjects such as art, science, and music allows them to determine where their talents lie, stimulating an interest in learning, and increasing self-worth. Most children in our programs qualify for free or reduced cost school lunches, so providing meals enables us to address nutrition and hunger issues.
Our focus on children and youth in poverty has currently led us to work in three very different DC neighborhoods, each with a compelling set of needs:
- Atlantic Gardens After-school Program in Washington Highlands in SE DC
- Marie Reed Science Club in Columbia Heights in NW DC
- Richardson Dwellings After-School Program in NE DC
Since we acknowledge that poverty is a multi-faceted problem, our programs never focus on a single issue. Rarely, even in the case of children and youth, are people held back from full participation in the benefits of society by one thing. The design of our programs is holistic, allowing us to offer supports on multiple levels, then leveraging our partnerships with other organizations to access the services we can not provide.