Beacon House provides afterschool education and youth development services to roughly 400 children, ages 5-18, annually. From the moment students enroll at Beacon House, as early as age five in many cases, our goal is high school graduation. Our school-year and summer programs provide year-round opportunities for learning and encourage academic achievement.
We base our work on an evidence-based theory of change which asserts that programming which stimulates intellectual, creative, physical, and social-emotional capabilities, with the support of caring adult mentors, will promote feelings of connectedness and a belief in one’s own learning abilities. Relationships with nonparental adults have been shown to have great potential to bolster black adolescents’ social-emotional well-being, increase academic achievement, and deter risk-taking behavior.
(D.L. DuBois et al., American Journal of Community Psychology, 2002; N.M. Hurd, F.A. Varner, S.J. Rowley, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2013; N.M. Hurd, R.M. Sellers, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2013).
Click below to learn more about our various programs:
Beacon House collaborates with multiple outstanding programmatic partners, several of which are listed below. These collaborations contribute to our goal of academic achievement for our students.
Enterprise Community Development (formerly Community Preservation and Development Corporation, or CPDC). The owner of the affordable housing community in which we are based, Enterprise Community Development donates space (with an annual in-kind value of about $170,000) in exchange for services we provide to residents.
The Catholic University of America (CUA). A partner for more than 15 years, CUA’s “DC Reads” program and homework help volunteers support Beacon House students with homework and literacy development. Additionally, two student-led mentoring programs – Girls in Action and Boyz II Men – were formed specifically for CUA student-athletes to serve as mentors for our youth in grades K-6.
College Bound. Our partnership with College Bound started in 2001 and they provide best-in-class college readiness programming. Beacon House serves as the Ward 5 service delivery site for College Bound’s Academic Mentoring Programming for 8th-12th grade students. We expanded our partnership in 2017-2018 by offering their “STEM in Your Hood” program to our middle school students. National Institutes of Health fellows serve as facilitators for STEM in Your Hood, which covers a variety of science and math topics that build on what the students are learning in middle school.
Reach, Incorporated (Reach). Recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2015 Innovations in Literacy Award, Reach has been a partner since 2016. It prepares high school students reading below grade level to serve as reading tutors for second and third grade students, resulting in improved literacy outcomes for both.
Shout Mouse Press. Our creative writing partnership with Shout Mouse Press has resulted in 15 books being authored by Beacon House youth. The success of “The Day Tajon Got Shot,” a Black Lives Matter movement-inspired novel written by 10 Beacon House teen girls, has attracted attention. “Tajon” has received two national awards and garnered our authors many community speaking opportunities. Hoping to build on that success, at the beginning of 2020, we began a new writing project with our middle school boys. The collection of books authored by Beacon House students can be found by clicking this link.
For Love Of Children (FLOC). FLOC trains volunteers to provide one-on-one tutoring in Reading and Math to students at Beacon House in grades 2-7.