Every Child Deserves a Fair Chance to Succeed

May 2009 Newsletter

Articles:

Celebrating Accomplishments at the 2009 Fair Chance Partner Graduation

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Academy of Hope, Breakthrough Collaborative DC, Fihankra Akoma Ntoaso (FAN), Pediatric AIDS/ HIV care, Resources for Inner City Children (RICH), College and Career Connections (formerly The Learning Communities Initiative), and The Scholarship Academy were honored on March 3, 2009 as they graduated from their year long partnership and collaboration with Fair Chance. Sponsored by Bank of America, the graduation was attended by partners, community leaders and supporters, and funders.

Some remarks from the graduating partners included:

"We serve approximately 300 middle and high school students in three partner schools in Ward 7. This year our partnership with Fair Chance has built up our capacity to do that more efficiently and effectively. Their program model allows the support that they provide to be very specific to the needs of each organization, and this has been a great blessing."
Deann Ayer, Executive Director, The Learning Communities Initiative


Graduating Fair Chance partners Darren Phelps, Executive Director of Breakthrough Collaborative DC and Deann Ayer, Executive Director of The Learning Communities Initiative

"Change is the buzzword of the past year, yet I prefer the word growth when I think of how Fair Chance has influenced RICH. Before Fair Chance, RICH was in the position to influence the lives of approximately 100 young people. Now, as I speak tonight, despite the economic crash, we can say that we are making a difference in the lives of 250 scholars."
Paul Penniman, Executive Director, Resources for Inner City Children (RICH)

"This past year, The Scholarship Academy's partnership with Fair Chance has provided us with a platform to develop sustainable systems, identify concrete fundraising plans, and expand our board development resources…It was truly the intrinsic value of knowing that someone else [Fair Chance] has a vested interest in the success of my program that propelled me to a level where I am proud to say that The Scholarship Academy is here to stay, and we're growing!"
Jessica Johnson, Executive Director, The Scholarship Academy

Executive Directors at these community nonprofits received over 350 technical assistance hours, with a focus on enhancing their capacity to provide critical services to some of the District's most underserved young people. With the support of Fair Chance, these seven organizations are now in an even stronger position to continue serving youth living in poverty with services such as HIV/AIDS education and therapy, college preparatory services, professional tutoring, career counseling, and comprehensive services for foster care youth. Together, these seven non-profits annually serve almost 1000 young people in Wards 5-8.

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Fair Chance Welcomes a New Partner and Sets a Strategic Course for 2009

Fair Chance was thrilled to welcome Brainfood in March as a new partner. Brainfood uses food as a tool to build life skills with youth in a fun and creative setting. Through culinary-related activities, they promote active learning, self-reliance and healthy living to empower youth as resources in their own community. The work Brainfood does to support the growth, development, and skill building of DC youth, as well as the way in which Brainfood participants interact with their community, makes Fair Chance proud to be supporting their efforts and the continued sustainability of their organization.

With the impact of the economy taking a significant toll on the state of nonprofit life in DC, Fair Chance has also made enhancements to the services we offer and the way in which we offer them to our partner organizations. Fair Chance recently completed a strategic planning process that has us continuing our comprehensive partnerships with five current, full time partners, and seven recent graduating partners on a more limited basis.

Fair Chance will also be offering more technical assistance opportunities to all our alumni partner organizations. Such opportunities will include assessing current needs of alumni partner organizations; offering “hot topic” capacity building workshops, roundtables and trainings; brokering pro bono services to assist with select partner needs;implementing a strong peer learning component where alumni can receive and give support; and providing individual capacity building support to alumni as needed. Fair Chance is committed to supporting all of our partner organizations in continuing to thrive throughout these challenging economic times.

Fair Chance Begins Strategic Partnership with DC Office of Justice Grants Administration (JGA)

This month, the DC Office of Justice Grants Administration (JGA) awarded Fair Chance a grant to work alongside them in a new funding initiative being offered to community nonprofits for FY2010. Each organization that is selected for this award will use JGA funds to provide programs and services that help prevent young people from becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. Fair Chance will provide a yearlong, intensive and highly customized capacity building partnership to each selected grantee.

Josh Webber, Director of the Justice Grants Administration, explained their decision to collaborate with Fair Chance stating, "Fair Chance has a long and successful track record of working with youth-serving organizations in the District to improve their program operations and ultimately their outcomes for youth and families".

Fair Chance is excited for this new initiative with JGA and looks forward to working with the new nonprofit organizations to assure the highest quality programs and continued services to young people.

The RFA was announced on April 13th, 2009 and the deadline for applications is May 15, 2009. For more information and/or to apply: http://opgd.dc.gov/opgd/lib/opgd/no2fy2010titlevpinsservicesimprovementprogramrfa.doc.

Technology Playground Strengthens Their Services to Youth

Technology Playground was founded in 2001 by Lonell Johnson, Executive Director, with the mission to develop the social, economic and educational skills of Washington DC youth while empowering them to become community leaders and life long learners through teaching, training and utilizing resources of information technology.

Technology Playground Group Photo
Technology Playground and their youth entrepreneurs
visit Erickson Barnett Marketing firm.

Fair Chance extended the partnership to Technology Playground in September 2009, impressed with the innovative ways in which Technology Playground reaches out to young people and helps empower them to build significant life skills. Lonell states that "being selected to be a part of the Fair Chance family has been nothing short of a blessing to the life of this organization".

Technology Playground offers underserved youth the opportunities to participate in various programming: a Steps to Success career exploration program, which has exposed over 100 youth to service learning projects through different career fields; the Virtual Trails Program, which teaches young kids how to utilize technology into an academic stream for learning about DC’s history; and the Young Urban Entrepreneurs program, that has worked with over 150 youth to help them write their own business plans and launch their businesses.

Due to the partnership with Fair Chance, Lonell states "Our organization has been met with a whole different level of respect throughout the District of Columbia". Since the partnership began, Technology Playground boasts significant changes to their organizational capacity. Due to Fair Chance's technical assistance focused on board development, Lonell says his Board of Directors is more aware of their roles and responsibilities and has been more active in supporting fundraising efforts and developing internal controls. The partnership has also developed a fundraising plan and supported the production of various grant proposals and reports. Lonell participated in the Fair Chance’s Funders Roundtable in March which offered an opportunity to meet with 6 local funders and participate in panel and small group discussions which further supported his efforts to diversify his sources of funding and building relationships for continued support.

Fair Chance looks forward to the continued growth and success of Technology Playground and congratulates Lonell Johnson for recently being recognized as one of the National Foundation For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) national Teachers of the Year for 2009.