It's Raining Wins, Hallelujah!

For our final blog of the year, we thought we'd share some of the recent wins that blew our collective minds, just at the beginning of this month, in case you didn't see the email our Executive Director sent out last week.

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461 Youth Earned A State Diploma

On Saturday December 3rd, the first cohort of GED recipients in the District were awarded their State Diplomas. We couldn’t be more proud of their hard work- or more thankful for the hundreds of youth and partners that helped to pass that policy through the SBOE. This graduation celebration for State Diploma recipients marked the culmination of their persistence and resilience, and we’re confident it marks one of many more accomplishments on their path to success.

We’re leading the way on out of school time

On Tuesday December 6th, the Office of Youth Outcomes and Grants Establishment Act of 2016, which sets out the system to redevelop and cohesively/effectively support and fund before, after and summer programming passed unanimously through a first Council vote; protecting AND expanding these critical services for the nearly 38,000 at risk students.

We are on the forefront of ending youth homelessness

On  Tuesday December 13, the DC Interagency Council passed the “Comprehensive Plan to End Youth Homelessness” (CPEYH...We’re still looking for a better title and acronym), a five year programmatic and funding strategy designed to grow a safety net system to ensure youth homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring. For the nearly 600 youth on any given night in DC experiencing homelessness or housing instability- that is a literal life changing, and potentially lifesaving, service and support.

Not a bad way to begin the end of the year! But also a sign of why the year-round support of individuals like you is so important.

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These kind of wins happen all year round. And if you'd like to ensure that we are able to be as nimble and responsive to opportunities like this, but also able to do the groundwork in the months leading up to these wins, to move the bar forward for DC youth:

Please consider making a gift

Thank you, and see you in 2017.

- Your DCAYA family