Our Community
A significant number of Dallas County school-age children are faced with multiple disadvantages that impact their ability to survive and thrive. The combined effects of poverty, crime, lack of parental involvement and the lack of afterschool programs result in poor school performance and educational attainment. Far Too many of these children are underachieving in the classroom and will ultimately drop out of high school.
In Dallas County, 18% of children live in poverty which means a family of four living on less than $20K or less per year. Between 2002 and 2007, the rate of at-risk children and youth in Dallas increased by 16.2%. When the school bell rings at the end of the day, juvenile crime triples.
In 2005, 51.1% of Dallas County students were at-risk. Students are considered to be at-risk by the Texas Education Agency if they meet one of the following criteria: limited English proficiency, failing to advance one grade for one or more school years, failing two or more courses in the current or previous year, not performing satisfactorily on current or previous assessment tests, not performing satisfactorily on the readiness test for the current school year pre-K through third grade. The Texas Education Agency reported that he percentage of third grade students in Dallas ISD passing math declined to 71% in 2006-2007. Dallas County high school graduation rates decreased from 82.9% in 2003 to 74.4% in 2006.
The Dallas Afterschool Network reports that 64,293 children living in Dallas County are unsupervised after school. 97,000 additional spaces in afterschool programs were needed to meet the need in 2010. Today we have nearly 100,000 children who are unsupervised after school and during summertime hours.
Our Kids
The children and young adults in our programs range between the ages of 5 and 21 and live in low-income apartment communities, sometimes in very dangerous neighborhoods. Some walk to school every day through gang territories with drug dealers and criminals all around them. Some live in abusive homes. Some can’t afford to eat three meals a day. Our kids are at great risk of academic failure, substance abuse, violence and dropping out of school simply because of the areas and environments where they live. In total 95% of our participants qualify for free lunches and 81% are minorities, 70% African American and 21% Hispanic.
Despite the odds against them, the children and young adults in our programs are bright, creative, strong, eager to learn, energetic, positive, caring, ambitious, and giving – who genuinely care about each other and their communities and want a better life for their families and a brighter future for themselves.