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Breaking the Chain Foundation (BTC) serves children ages 6-16 in Ward 8 of the District of Columbia by providing educational and social enrichment services to a population that would normally go unserved.
BTC has entered into a partnership with several local faith-based and governmental organizations to provide the students of Ward 8 with a safe, nurturing place to go after school. The Homework Center is a joint partnership between BTC and Covenant Baptist Church, long a spiritual home in the community; CSOSA, the District’s Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency; and Making the Grade Tutorial Service, LLC a professional tutoring service that will provide exemplary academic strategies for the advancement of students. This partnership was launched in 2005 with the goal of arresting the progression of juvenile crime by providing positive intervention in the lives of young people, all of whom have parents or other loved ones who are current or ex-offenders. If indeed it is true that “children live what they learn” from their environment, then the lives of poverty, exposure to drug abuse, poor education and crime that many of our children experience would condemn them to repeat the cycle of despair that many of their parents have endured. Thus, we wanted to “break the chain” of hopelessness and despair by providing sound and practical alternatives to the streets. The best way to start, in our opinion, is to use practical solutions to intervene in the students’ lives in such a way that they will start to value the positive interaction, their improved educational prospects and model the behaviors that they will see from responsible adults living a healthy lifestyle.
Thus, the Homework Center combines the best of the practical with the hope of better lives to come. Through its collaboration, BTC provides 20 students with a safe, alternative environment where education is key. Students come from the hours of 5 to 7 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and are guided to complete their homework by Making the Grade Tutorial staff. After their homework is completed, they engage in fun, wholesome activities with trained Youth Coordinators who specialize in the positive growth and development of young people. The students are taken on periodic outings, and are given a great deal of encouragement, guidance and love. These several hours spent at the Homework Center are a respite from often-difficult home environments where parents can be either absent or ill prepared to care for their children’s social and educational needs. In addition, the center works with parents to help provide the tools to better care for and nurture their children, so that the cycle of poverty and learned helplessness can be broken. |
