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 Programs and Services Family Support & Housing Services Home Based Childcare Microenterprise
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Education & Youth DevelopmentInspiring Life-Long Learners
WHEDCo encourages students to be community leaders, and to attend competitive high schools and colleges, by providing innovative, high quality arts, social, cultural, and academic activities. WHEDCo’s model extracurricular program and summer camp combine academic The culminating experience of our extracurricular program is Project STEP (Students Toward Educational Promise). This program for middle school students (in 6th through 8th grade) combines critical thinking, social activism and academic enrichment. Through service learning projects, students learn about an issue and then take on the role of advocates in their community. Eighth graders also receive support for the high school admissions process in the form of high school fairs (also open to 7th graders) and exam preparation for the Specialized High School Admissions Test. The goal is to help students find out about and gain admission to high performing schools, which are defined by proficiency tests, college readiness performance and graduation rates. All of the students participating in Project STEP have gained admission to one of their top three choices for public high schools. The Teens in WHEDCo’s Project STEP hosted a Health Education Fair For Young Bodies and Minds in 2008.
WHEDCo's contributions to the after-school field have received wide recognition. Our program was featured in the February 2007 issue of Edutopia Magazine, a national magazine supported by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which aims to highlight exemplary programs in K-12 public schools and share best practices nationwide.
From After-School to City Hall: Youth Advocate for Sex EducationEmpowered to take action as part of a WHEDCo after-school project in spring 2006, a group of seventh-grade girls, under the guidance of WHEDCo staff, developed a petition and gathered over 200 signatures demanding they be taught sex education in their school. They presented their ideas to the school principal and representatives from the NYC Department of Education and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Their advocacy project attracted citywide attention to the need for a comprehensive sex education curriculum, and immediately resulted in a commitment by the school principal to offer a required HIV/AIDS curriculum during the last days of the school year. Read the Press Release. The student activists also developed a brochure and a web page with information, links, and resources on the subject of sex education. Check out their website at: http://sexed4u.googlepages.com/ As high school freshman, the girls advocated for mandated sex education, joining WHEDCo president Nancy Biberman, in testifying during the City Council's hearings on sex education in the City's public schools on November 27, 2007. Read Nancy's testimony. Their story has been featured in media outlets across the city, including WNBC-TV Newschannel 4, the Brian Lehrer Show WNYC 93.9 FM, the AM New York, the New York Post and the Daily News.
Sixth Annual High School Fair for 7th and 8th Graders at PS/MS 218. Among the schools represented were Bard HighSchool, Friends Seminary, Academy for Careers and Sports, All Hallows High School, and Bronx Science High School. WHEDCo's Project STEP Director, Nicole Jennings with students at the Fair
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instruction, arts, sports, and cultural activities with the support of a social worker. In 2008, WHEDCo's After-School Program collaborated with Mayor Bloomberg’s Teen Action Service Learning program and was recently awarded two Teen Action Awards for having the Highest Rate of Participation at 120% of all 60 youth programs participating in Teen Action, and for being the Longest Running Program.
WHEDCo is honored to receive The After-School Corporation’s (TASC) Partnerships with a Purpose Award. Recognizing WHEDCo’s outstanding partnership with PS/MS 218 over the past seven years, this award symbolizes WHEDCo’s commitment to providing engaging and enriching opportunities to students in the South Bronx. Selected out of the more than 300 programs, WHEDCo joined the award’s two other recipients at TASC’s tenth anniversary celebration on Wednesday October 15, 2008. WHEDCo’s President Nancy Biberman, WHEDCo’s Vice President for Programs Davon Russell, and PS/MS 218 Principal Leticia Rosario were on hand to publically receive the award
WHEDCo's Summer Campers created a Native Pollinator Garden at Urban Horizons on August 12, 2008. The garden will serve as home to butterflies being raised by kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade classes at PS/MS 218. 