Q3 Impact Report!

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Through our partnership with The East Lake Foundation, we are granting 6 early learning scholarships for children of the Villages of East Lake to attend Sheltering Arms Early Learning Academy. In addition, we are partnering with the Drew Charter Senior Academy College and Career readiness depart to support the following programs: college visits, affordability planning, scholarship resources, ACT preparation, college advising, and social-emotional counseling.

Thank you for being a part of the success of students at the Drew Charter Senior Academy and Villages of East Lake Community.Thank YOU for being a part of equipping students with early education to ease the transition into elementary school. Thank YOU for being an intricate part of supporting programs for students to plan wisely in their pursuit of college or a career!

Tour of Drew Charter Academy

J.Rich Atlanta Team with Aaron James from the East Lake Foundation

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A few days ago, our team was lead on a tour around the Drew Charter Senior Academy. We were so impressed by the students, teachers, and facility. The campus was beautifully designed and intentionally thought through. From the hallways to the chairs used in the classroom, every detail has a purpose and adds value to the school.

After a quick tour of the school and a reliving some "glory day" moments at the basketball gym, we made our way to the college and career readiness department. This specific department is one of the two areas that we are supporting in our 3rd quarter partnership with The East Lake Foundation. 

We were so impressed by the College and Career Readiness team! It was so obvious that the Drew Charter Academy students and their families feel at ease when working with this team. During our meeting they explained that the whole staff is dedicated to helping families understand the college application process, applying for scholarships – and all the different options, emotional counseling and support, etc. Drew Charter is focused on a students success which includes the entire family.

Drew Charter just had their first graduating class and 100% of the students graduated. This is huge! In addition, students are leaving this Fall (right now!) to go off to college, everywhere from GSU to Yail! Incredible.

We arehonored to partner with an organization that is shaping the lives of the next generation and beyond.

Meeting Jeremy Courtney

A few weeks ago, Jeremy Courtney from Preemptive Love Coalition came and hang out with us at our Monday team meeting. This meeting was something we did not take lightly, as Jeremy is rarely in the states and we wanted to make sure we took full advantage of our time with him.

We sat around in a circle and asked him to start from the beginning. “How did PLC start?”  What were you doing before? How did you meet your wife.. and so on. As the story goes, PLC was birthed out of a desperate need for one child to get a life saving heart surgery. It was through Jeremy’s persistence and determination to make this happen, that he discovered his passion for this cause specifically.

PLC began by performing life saving heart surgeries for children in Iraq. In fact, they have performed thousands of these surgeries and saved many lives. Amazing. This work came to a cross roads when they had to make a decision. They had to ask themselves, do we grow outside Iraq and expand our heart surgeries, or do we take a step back and see what we can do to help in a different way.

As this conversation was happening, so was the rise of ISIS. It was clear after the attacks started that there was a new pressing need for the people in Iraq – it was emergency aid. From here they have delivered and assisted in the feeding of thousands people, meeting medical needs, and delivering water. Desperation is overwhelming, and they are on the front lines.

PLC has slowly begun to move into Syria. As they start to rebuild, PLC is the first organization there helping. They are helping families repair their past and build a new future. It is because of you that this is possible. It is because of you that families are able to begin to build a new life for themselves.

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Sheltering Arms Early Learning Academy

Through our partnership with ELF, we will be sponsoringstudents to attend Sheltering Arms Early Learning Academy from the Villages of East Lake. It is because of YOU that students from the Villages of East Lake are able to attend school and have the potential to not only meet their developmental milestones, but exceed them. Read more about Sheltering Arms below!

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Since 1999, the Sheltering Arms Early Education & Family Center in East Lake has been the East Lake Foundation’s partner in ensuring that children from the community have a strong foundation for learning. Sheltering Arms provides early childhood education programming for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years (infants through Pre-K) in a facility built as part of the East Lake revitalization.

The program serves more than 130 children annually, including 30+ who live in The Villages of East Lake (VOEL), the mixed-income housing developed by ELF as part of the community redevelopment. Most of the VOEL residents receive scholarships through funding raised by the East Lake Foundation to ensure that cost is not an obstacle to attendance for economically disadvantaged children from VOEL.

Research has shown that access to high quality early childhood education is particularly important for children from economically disadvantaged families. A study conducted by Dr. Betty Hart (University of Kansas) and Dr. Todd Risley (University of Alaska) concluded that children from low-income households heard 30 million fewer words by age three than their high-income counterparts. Even by 18 months, children in different socio-economic groups displayed dramatic differences in their vocabularies (Dr. Anne Fernald, Stanford University). This is key because vocabulary and literacy development in the early years is related to later reading skills and school success.

Sheltering Arms addresses this need by serving working families with affordable and high quality early childhood education and comprehensive support services. To address literacy and vocabulary, teachers are trained to place a strong emphasis on language and pre-literacy instruction to ensure that children enter kindergarten ready to learn to read, and enter 3rd grade ready to read to learn. The curriculum, teacher qualifications, facilities, and health and safety procedures are administered based on the highest quality standards in the industry. The results are strong – about 92% of children attending Sheltering Arms centers in metro Atlanta meet or exceed developmental milestones for their age. The remaining 8% are either new to the program, or are referred for special services to address developmental delays and special —needs.

Quarter 3 : The East Lake Foundation

We are so excited to announce that for our third quarter partnership we will be working with The East Lake Foundation for a second year! We are passionate about community development and The East Lake Foundation is a model for healthy and holistic community development across the country. Last year through our partnership with ELF, we partnered with their education sector. Through this, we granted 7 early learning scholarships and also funded improved stem resources, like a 3d printer, for the Drew Charter After school program!

This year, we will again be working in collaboration with the ELF education sector of their organization. We will be working with the youngest students by funding several grants for Early Learning Scholarships and also working with the oldest students by sponsoring the College and Career Readiness program at Drew Charter High school! We can't wait to share more details about these amazing programs. 

Over the next few months we will share the East Lake & East Lake Foundation story and how they are continuing to grow and develop not only communities in Atlanta but communities across the country.

Brilliant!

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ps- check out their 2016 impact report below. This is a small glimpse into the impact the east lake foundation is making.

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Impact Report : Q2

Sana's Story | Mahmoud & Aalaa's Story

S A N A 's Story

"When war came to the Hanano district of northeastern Aleppo in 2012, tragedy struck quickly and cruelly in Sana Ali Nahhal’s household. She lost both her husband and her 16-year-old son, Abdul Hameed, in a missile attack. Sana was devastated by both losses, but Abdul’s death hit particularly hard.... “He was the light of my life; he was the candle of my house,”recalls Sana.

A short time later, Sana took her 14 remaining children and fled to Aadhamiyye, a government-controlled neighborhood in western Aleppo. There she stayed for four years, renting a house for 25,000 Syrian pounds per month and cleaning other people’s houses to pay as much as she could toward her expenses. Her brothers helped as they were able. Geographically, she was a mere seven miles from Hanano, but her home and the life she knew there seemed far more distant.

Sana missed being in Hanano: “I remembered how my children and I used to have lunch in our home. We were a happy family and we didn’t need anything. We left our house suddenly, and we were never able to find the security and the love we used to know there once we were displaced.”

“Frankly,” Sana says, “I didn’t expect to ever come back to my home.” When she did return to Hanano at the beginning of this year, it didn’t feel like the place she had known. “I couldn’t believe my eyes. I found my house looted and broken down—no taps, no windows, no doors. The motor had been removed from my refrigerator, and I had no gas, no oven. Even our clothes were stolen.

Sana did the best she could to provide food and shelter for her fourteen children and herself through the cold winter months. “I desperately need to get my house fixed,” she says. “Some of my children got sick because of the cold air.” The house still lacks many of its windows and doors, and she can’t afford even basic repairs.

Sana still acutely feels the loss of her husband and son, and of the life she knew. She hasn’t given up, however. She expresses a desire to have her house back the way it was, and hopes against hope that things could even be better than before. She very much appreciates the opportunity to make a new start.

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MAHMOUD & AALAA'S Story

Mahmoud Hussein Hussein and his wife, Aalaa, lived happily with their two little children in the Hanano district of Aleppo until the war came. As food and milk for the children became scarce in the local markets, they were forced to leave their home in August 2012. They fled to Afrin, a Kurd-controlled district in the countryside northwest of Aleppo.

They spent four years there, trying to eke out a living by selling coffee from a small wheeled cart or transporting goods for people. Their situation was difficult from the start, and it didn’t get any easier; “We moved from one rental house to another,” says Mahmoud, “and the rental fees climbed as high as 20,000–25,000 Syrian pounds per month.”

Aalaa wanted to supplement the family’s meager and inconsistent income, but was hampered by a language barrier. “I tried to work in Afrin,” she says, “but I couldn’t because I don’t speak the Kurdish language. I couldn’t help my husband make a living, and couldn’t even educate my children because the schools were for Kurdish-speaking students.”

As the years wore on, Mahmoud and Aalaa started to give up hope of ever returning to Hanano. In an effort to get their children enrolled in school, the couple relocated to Latakia, a city on the Mediterranean coast 125 miles away. But things only got worse. Neither Mahmoud nor Aalaa could get work.

When the Syrian army regained control of their neighborhood at the beginning of 2017, they came back to Aleppo. Theirs was a disappointing homecoming, however. Mahmoud remembers it: “We were shocked when we saw that everything in our house had been either stolen or demolished, and we had nothing left. All our furniture, our water taps, the windows, even the main door of the house were all gone. Our life savings—all we had worked for—was gone.” “Our house is as good as a barn, with no windows, no doors, nothing at all,” Aalaa adds. “Our worries have only become greater. There are no schools operating here. The future of our children is vanishing day after day.” 

Being home has brought back memories for Aalaa. She remembers how her sister used to visit, how they lived together, cooked together, had conversations and worked through fights together. She says the war turned their lives to hell, but the memories of how things were before and the hope of how their lives can be keep her going. “We want to live a life without bloodshed, insults, or unfairness,” she says. “We want to live without being offended. We want to make a future for ourselves and our children.”

In spite of all they have endured, Mahmoud and Aalaa hold on to happiness. They’re putting their lives back together, piece by piece. Mahmoud looks forward to finding a job and once again settling in their house which, thanks to you, will soon be renovated.