Please Help Project Create Say YES! to Summer Learning

From Project Create:



Dear Friends,

All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities over the summer. For children and youth experiencing homelessness and poverty, learning losses can be extreme. For example, low-income students lose more than two months in reading achievement, despite the fact that their middle-class peers make slight gains. Most of this achievement gap can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. Many parents, especially those living in underserved, under-resourced communities, struggle to ensure that their children are academically and creatively engaged during summer months.
 
This is where Project Create comes in! Our summer programs provide children and youth in Washington, D.C.’s most vulnerable East of the River communities with accessible, high-quality arts education all summer long. Through Project Create’s unique model of creative youth development, our students learn important 21st Century skills like critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, leadership and responsibility. By providing free classes in visual, performing and digital media arts, Project Create succeeds in countering summer learning loss.
 
Will you help us Say Yes to Summer Learning?! 
 
From June 29 to August 8, Project Create provides free art classes to over 150 students at our brand-new Anacostia studio, as well as at the Merrick Center, both in D.C. Ward 8. Through classes like photography, mixed media collage, maker studio (featuring technology like 3-D printing), fashion and capoeira, Project Create students are learning and being creative this summer. We have been planning for this summer all year. Then, just last month, Project Create was invited to provide summer arts programs at Barry Farms Recreation Center and in partnership with Community Services Foundation. And we couldn’t say no!
 
But we need your help to Say Yes to Summer Learning…will you support Project Create programming through two new partnerships this summer? Our goal is to raise $5,000 by this time next week so that we can support four weeks of classes for 150 new students at the Barry Farm Recreation Center and at four locations served by Community Services Foundation.
 
Please read more about our new partners below, and then make a donation to Project Create to help us Say YES to Summer Learning…and to 150 new students who are looking forward to a great month of art classes with Project Create.
 
Thank you in advance for your support!

Christie Walser
Executive Director


The Barry Farm Recreation Center at 1230 Sumner Road SE is the premier recreation site in D.C. Ward 8. This new center features an outer space-themed playground, two outdoor basketball courts, and a full-size football and soccer field. The site also includes an indoor pool, fitness center, community garden, large multi-purpose room, full kitchen, computer lab, teen center, senior room, and a large games area including a billiards table, foosball and ping pong. Summer day camps at the Barry Farm Community Center are free to young residents.

Community Services Foundation is a nonprofit organization providing social service programs to over twenty low-income apartment communities throughout metropolitan Washington, D.C. Their programs serve more than 500 young people through out-of-school-time programs, as well as hundreds of adults and seniors with educational, cultural and recreational on-site programs. Their Summer Enrichment Program, which is free to residents, is designed to help reduce the effects of summer learning loss and to instill in youth that learning can be (and is) fun!