Growing up in inner city Denver, JB Schramm, founder of College Summit, took it for granted that he and his schoolmates would all go to college. Schramm did go to college, but his buddies did not. The difference: Schramm had college-educated parents to guide him through the process and his friends did not.

“It wasn’t that my friends were not college material. They relied on a system in the high school that didn’t work,” Schramm says. That experience left an indelible mark and eventually helped lead him to his life’s work, College Summit, a national program that has successfully increased the college enrollment and graduation rates of low-income students across the country.

From its humble beginnings in the basement of a low-income housing project in Washington, DC with four students, College Summit now has programs in 10 states and has worked with more than 8,000 students. Seventy-nine percent of College Summit Peer Leaders enroll in colleges and universities, nearly double the national rate of 46% for high school graduates from the same income level. Perhaps even more remarkable is that more than three quarters of College Summit students, who were never even expected to enroll in college, graduate.

Schramm’s idea for the program began to germinate while he was working his way through Harvard Divinity School as a Freshman Advisor to undergraduates. He saw lots of memos going back and forth among admissions officers at Harvard and other universities and was struck by the hunger colleges have for low-income talent and their inability to connect with this talent.

After completing divinity school, Schramm moved to Washington, DC, where he ran an after-school program for Jubilee Housing that served the Columbia Heights/North Adams Morgan neighborhoods. He recruited the best writing professor he’d seen at Harvard and the most effective youth worker he knew.

“In the beginning I had a whole lot to learn. I had to understand the neighborhood and the community to be helpful. I was a nerdy white guy and it took a while for people to accept and trust me. I wasn’t intrinsically cool but what I lacked in coolness I made up for in consistency. They saw that I would keep my word.” he recalls.

Schramm learned three important lessons. First, he came to the conclusion that the way to transform a community is to reach the most influential people who are teenagers. They set the pace in the neighborhood and determine whether people feel safe, he says. They also influence younger kids. The second lesson was figuring out how to communicate the options available to young people in ways that made sense both to them and their parents. And finally, he observed that higher education knew how to connect with the handful of students in the community who did well on standardized tests and often had bidding wars for these students. But there was no good way for colleges to connect with the average student in low-income communities who, if born in a more affluent community, would nonetheless go on to college.

“The students in the middle, who may not be great test takers but who have talent, get ignored. There were kids in our program who were writing screenplays, convening meetings with community leaders and the police to address issues, or balancing accounting books but had low test scores. I was so tired of seeing this talent not make it. If these were middle-class kids with the same test scores, they would go to college. The system works for the middle class. The problem isn’t the kids but the system and how do we fix it,” said Schramm.

College Summit repairs the parts of the system that are broken for low-income students. From his observations of middle-class students, Schramm realized that there were three things that were critical to helping young people get to college:

• a support system of college-educated adults who set high expectations for students and help them navigate the college admissions process;
• a college-going culture among young people who themselves expect and believe that they can and should go to college; and, finally,
• a way to bring students who are better than their numbers to the attention of colleges.

To create the support system, College Summit partners with high schools to train teachers to fill the manager role that college-experienced parents play for their own children. The teachers meet with high school seniors once a week in regularly scheduled classes where they check in with students one-on-one to remind them about filling out applications, answer questions, review essays, and encourage students to plan their transition from high school to college and beyond.

The “secret sauce” of the program are the influential students College Summit trains to bring a college culture to their schools. The students are trained at four-day residential workshops held on college campuses that teach students how to create a portfolio, apply to colleges, expose them to college life, and influence their peers. College Summit works with high school teachers to tap rising seniors who are “better than their numbers and influential with their peers” to attend these workshops. When the students go back to school, they become peer leaders encouraging others to apply to college and helping to engender a culture where it is cool for not just for the high achievers but average students to go on to college.

The final ingredient is College Summit’s network of partnerships with colleges around the country. Through these partnerships, College Summit is able to bring talented students to the attention of admissions officers. In return for providing facilities and covering expenses of the workshops for 50 students, the colleges get an early look at the portfolios program participants create while on their campus, as well as those from other parts of the country. And because of the support and guidance they have received from the program, the students are able to present themselves in a way that admissions officers can see beyond the numbers to their talents and abilities.

While the program seeks to uncover talents in young people that are not always best measured by numbers, College Summit does look at numbers to measure its own success. And the numbers tell an impressive story. To date, College Summit has trained more than 700 teachers from more than 100 public high schools, formed partnerships with 60 colleges and universities, conducted 120 workshops serving nearly 8,000 students, and helped its students earn more than $40 million in scholarships.

It was this track record of success and Schramm’s big thinking that made College Summit an attractive investment partner for VPP. VPP’s focus on systemic change appealed to Schramm. While College Summit has had its national headquarters in Washington, DC, it is only recently that the program launched a DC/Metro office to focus on bringing the benefits of the program to young people throughout the metropolitan area. While both VPP and College Summit had been aware of each other’s work, serious conversations about a partnership occurred once the DC office was launched. College Summit became an investment partner in December 2004.

“VPP partners understand system change because they have personally led education, social service, and business systems in the region. So far, VPP has provided savvy guidance for navigating the region’s education systems and for understanding how to most effectively support the school district and higher education leaders’ own system change efforts,” Schramm says.

In the future Schramm hopes to grow the program so that each of the students has access to more and more colleges. He proudly speaks of new partnerships with Howard University and the University of California and the powerful resources that College Summit is able to bring to schools and colleges committed to strengthening the post-secondary transition for low-income students.

For Schramm, social problems are opportunities and he believes we have the power to hatch solutions.

“The most provocative, supportive educational experience of my life was in an inner-city high school. So I know in my gut the power of diverse teams bent on excellence...and I don't believe any excuses for mediocrity,” he says.

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The SEED Foundation: VPP’s Newest Investment Partner

VPP has entered into an investment partnership with The SEED Foundation, which founded and oversees The SEED School of Washington, DC, the first urban public boarding school in the nation. The SEED School is located in southeast Washington, DC, and serves 310 students in grades 7-12.

During the next five to seven months VPP will help The SEED Foundation implement a comprehensive business planning process by providing up to $350,000 in funding and strategic assistance. This will enable the Foundation to engage leading experts in the fields of strategic planning, outcomes design, and finance to help them develop a comprehensive multi-year business plan. This plan will guide SEED toward achievement of their aspirations to serve an additional 600 youth in the region and become a national model for other communities wanting to establish urban boarding schools.

SEED has strong leadership in its founders and managing directors, Eric Adler and Rajiv Vinnakota, who are highly regarded for their innovative approach to educating students in urban settings and for their exceptional talent in mobilizing resources and support for The SEED School. They and their leadership team have evolved from a small group of visionaries to nationally recognized thought leaders focused on inner-city education and revitalization.

Adler and Vinnakota founded The SEED Foundation in 1997 as a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing innovative educational opportunities in urban areas. In 1998 they began serving 40 seventh grade students at the school's original site at the Capital Children's Museum. A year later they found a vacant elementary school building and raised the funding to transform the former Weatherless Elementary School into a four-building campus with boys' and girls' dormitories, an academic building, student center and a tree-filled courtyard, spread across four acres adjacent to federal parkland.

The SEED Foundation is dedicated to substantially increasing college enrollment rates for high school students by providing a five-day per week, 24-hour-a-day college preparatory academic program. The SEED students are selected randomly through an annual lottery and all come from the District of Columbia, with a majority from Wards 5, 7, and 8. The school's educational programs have evolved to incorporate a "Ninth Grade Gate" preparatory program that ensures that students have mastered crucial academic and social skills before entering SEED's rigorous college preparatory Upper School.

The results thus far have been encouraging: SEED's first two classes, which graduated in spring 2004 and 2005, earned 100 percent rates of acceptance to four-year colleges and universities, including such prestigious schools as Princeton and Howard Universities.

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Investment Partner Updates

BGCGW Cookbook Offers Techniques to Fight Obesity

Thanks to Tanzi West, Director of Communications, for this update.

The obesity epidemic continues to rise across the country. Twenty percent of adults in the Washington, DC area are considered obese (body mass index greater than or equal to 30.0 kg/meters) compared to 21 percent of the nation. In an effort to promote healthy living, the Women’s Leadership Group (WLG) of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington (BGCGW) has published a cookbook designed to reveal easy cooking techniques, stressing the importance of moderation and balance in one’s diet.

The Balanced Way To Cook Gourmet – A Gift of Health features more than 100 multicultural recipes which include tips on how to make substitutions to reduce or eliminate saturated fats and sugars, what and why certain foods are more ideal than others, and what combinations make a well-balanced meal.

“Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington serves more than 36,000 kids each year in the Washington Metropolitan area. Some of our kids are included in the obesity statistics. The Women’s Leadership Group of BGCGW was founded on the premise of making a difference in a child’s life. With this cookbook, we can do that by offering nutritional gourmet recipes for parents and caregivers of our kids. It’s a fun and healthy way for families to spend time together,” said Patti Andringa, founder of WLG and author of cookbook.

CMHS Convenes Conference, Receives Two Major Grants

Thanks to Ricarda Dowling, Director of Development, for this update.

On June 17, the Center for Multicultural Human Services (CMHS) convened a conference for service providers in the region on “Cross-Cultural Issues in Addressing Domestic Violence.” More than 300 service providers attended the conference, held at the Fairfax County Government Center and strongly supported by the County. Participants heard keynote speakers, attended specialized breakout groups with presentations by CMHS clinical staff and staff from other collaborating agencies, and saw a segment of a theatrical piece dealing with the experiences of a Puerto Rican victim of domestic violence.

On June 28, CMHS and the Freddie Mac Foundation announced a $550,000 award to CMHS for the expansion of its transitional housing program from one unit to five. The press conference also included the announcement that the City of Falls Church has awarded CMHS the rent-free use of its “Miller House” facility for its transitional housing program. The language and cultural minority families and individuals who will participate in the program will receive an intensive set of supportive services that may include therapy, ESL, computer literacy, basic life skills, case management, and other services to successfully position them for self-sufficiency when they leave the transitional housing unit.

Also in June, CMHS was awarded a grant of $392,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to codify its unique model of service delivery. This grant will allow CMHS to become established as a recognized technical assistance center for organizations and entities nationwide that are seeking guidance in developing mental health systems and services that are more responsive to the needs of vulnerable immigrant and refugee populations. By identifying and codifying essential organizational and clinical components that can be replicated for effectively treating vulnerable newcomers, the project will result in a means to make culturally appropriate and effective mental health services more widely available to cultural, language, and ethnic minority families nationwide.


CentroNía Celebrates Family Literacy Program’s Fifth Anniversary

Thanks to Isabel Barranzuela, Development Associate, for this update.

Five years ago CentroNía began its Saturday morning tutoring program with 15 students and tutors. Back then, the first floor was more than enough space to hold the tutoring sessions. Now, CentroNía hosts two days of tutoring per week and fills the entire building on Saturday mornings. In addition, the program has expanded into two elementary schools and one middle school, serving more than 100 students paired up with more than 100 tutors and five university partners.

This year the tutoring program achieved its goal of helping children improve their reading, writing, and math skills. As planned, each student obtained 100% mastery of the 36-Step Reading Program and 28-Step Math Program. Full-year students from Bruce Monroe and CentroNía Saturday and Wednesday programs achieved 86% improvement in math and 83% improvement in reading by at least 2.5 grade levels.

College Summit Kicks Off Workshop Season 2005

Thanks to Omar Garriott, Senior Coordinator, Marketing Strategy and Public Policy, for this update.

The College Summit workshop season 2005, its largest ever (a 50% increase over last year), has gotten off to a strong start. Intensive four-day residential workshops—where low-income, academically "mid-tier" students are guided through the entire college matching, application, and transition process and teachers are trained on delivering the College Summit curriculum throughout senior year—have successfully been run on the campuses of partner colleges Regis University (Denver), the University of South Carolina, Metropolitan State College (Denver), California-Lutheran University, Arizona State University, and Morgan State University. Multiple workshops are scheduled each week throughout the month of July. Howard University, a prestigious historically black college in the heart of the nation's capital, is a new partner this summer with a workshop scheduled for August 11-14.

The College Summit 2005 New Sites Conference takes place July 9-10 at DePaul University's downtown Chicago campus. The conference provides participants from across the country the chance to observe the impact of College Summit and evaluate the long-term potential for bringing the program to their respective regions. Conference attendance is an exploratory step to bring potential new College Summit sites into the pipeline, and an opportunity for community leaders to witness the programmatic model first-hand. The conference coincides with the DePaul University workshop, serving students from the Chicago area.

Friendship School Gains New Principal, New Academy

Thanks to Barry Lofton, Director of Communications, for this update.

The Friendship Public Charter School Board of Trustees announced the appointment of Ralph H. Neal as Principal of the Friendship Junior Academy – Blow Pierce Campus. He is the former Assistant Superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools system and has more than four decades of education experience in Washington, DC.

Neal will lead the establishment of an Early College Initiative at the Blow Pierce Middle School. The Early College initiative seeks to bring high school and college programs closer together and better prepare low-income and minority students for high school graduation and success. The activation of this strategy begins in the sixth grade when an educational plan is developed by the school team of administrators, teachers, and academic achievement coordinators in partnership with the student and parents or guardians to map out a pathway from middle school through college.

Heads Up Benefits from CharityWorks Events

Thanks to Executive Director Darin McKeever for this update.

Last year, Heads Up was selected to be the 2005 partner and beneficiary of CharityWorks, a high impact organization creating positive change by uniting corporate leaders, donors, and volunteers to enable nonprofits to transform lives.  Two of CharityWorks’ three major events to benefit Heads Up took place recently. On May 20, VPP Investor and Heads Up board member Jack Davies co-chaired the first such event, a 100 Point Vintage Wine Dinner at the McLean home of VPP Investors Lynn and Ted Leonsis.  Two hundred guests had the opportunity to sample ten perfect wines and taste the accompanying creations of such renowned local chefs as Jeff Buben of Vidalia, Roberto Donna of Galileo, Michel Richard of Citronelle, and Jonathan Krinn of 2941.

The second benefit event, Nordstrom’s Fall 2005 Designer Preview, was held at the Andrew W. Mellon auditorium on June 21 and attracted more than 350 fashion fans who came out to view next season’s couture while supporting a great cause. The grandest of CharityWorks’ events for Heads Up is still to come later this year with the 2005 Dream Ball and auction on October 1 at the National Building Museum. This black-tie event is always a highlight of the social season, and 2005’s should prove no different.

LAYC Celebrates Graduations and Summer Programs

Thanks to Executive Director Lori Kaplan for this update.

May and June were filled with cheers and tears at the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC). Youth and their parents, many of whom have not experienced educational success in the past, came together to appreciate their accomplishments.

Twelve students completed the Bard College at the LAYC Introduction to Humanities course. Students had spent two evenings a week for eight months learning about art history, US history, literature and poetry, philosophy and critical thinking, and writing. The Center's bilingual computer literacy program graduated 38 youth and their parents from its spring course. Sixty students in grades 9-12 graduated from the LAYC Upward Bound Program, and all 10 graduating LAYC Upward Bound seniors will be in college this fall, the first in their families to pursue this dream. LAYC Next Step Public Charter School recognized 12 young people who earned their GED credential. Each graduating student received a $500 certificate from the Board of Directors scholarship fund to help with expenses related to continuing their education in community college, auto mechanics, and a medical assistant training program.

More than 800 children and youth will participate in summer camps, summer school, and summer jobs at LAYC youth centers and charter schools in Washington, DC, and Maryland. Fifty youth will be scooping Ben & Jerry's flavors at LAYC’s Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops at Eastern Market and Chevy Chase, DC, and the first Maryland summer educational arts camp is up and running in Prince George's County for 120 youth. As part of the social enterprise program located at the LAYC Art and Media Center, the first summer cultural arts camp has enrolled 20 campers.

The LAYC also received noticed they are recipients of $300,000 grant from Montgomery County, MD for youth workforce development. The LAYC will work with 100 youth, both in-school and out-of-school, in collaboration with the Montgomery County one-stop system.

Mary’s Center Celebrates Grand Opening of New Health Center

Thanks to David Bender, Vice President, Business Development and Communications, for this update.

Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care held the Grand Opening of its new Health Center at 508 Kennedy Street, NW, this past Saturday, July 9. This center will be the first and only health center serving Ward 4. This is Mary's Center's first major expansion since becoming a VPP investment partner and achieves the first objective of the Mary's Center Plan for Growth developed through the business planning process of our investment partnership.

On May 11, a number of guests arrived early at Maya Angelou Public Charter School’s Cooking Up a Future to enjoy the students’ artwork and displays throughout the Shaw campus before the crowd of over 500 filled all five floors. Event veterans waited outside to see Dr. Maya Angelou arrive. By 6:30 pm, students and guests swarmed registration tables in front of the school and spilled onto Ninth Street.

Nearby, an anxious group of Maya Angelou students gathered in the conference room at the See Forever Foundation. Crammed in between ironing boards and boxes of gift bags, the students were dressing in black pants, white shirts and neatly pressed red vests. One volunteer said, “They were all so excited; it was a thrill just being there to help them get ready!”

The big event included areas of each floor dedicated to showcasing student achievement and activities. A community art activity—complete with paint-filled squirt guns—delighted the crowd on the third floor. Guests enjoyed refreshments in the school cafeteria, on the building’s roof, and under an enormous tent in the parking lot, transformed by elegant tables, candles, and flowers. Many students had the opportunity to express their feelings and share their experiences through poetry and presentations on stage. The formal program of the evening included a tribute to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton; a show-stopping presentation by event host, Dr. Maya Angelou; and student readings and reflections.

Desiree Williams, MAPCS Alumna, wrote: The excitement and pride showed on the students’ faces. In the main building students worked tirelessly on projects that they were to perform that night. You could hear poems and speeches ringing throughout the hall. As guests started arriving, a student guided each of them on tours to visit all of the different rooms. The students were very informed and answered all the guest questions with clarity and confidence. It was a great night!

June 28 was the day to celebrate Maya Angelou’s 2005 graduates. In their time at Maya Angelou, graduates have studied a cross-section of American and world literature and written their own poetry in the ancient forms and traditions of the odes, haiku, and sonnets. They have written critical literary analysis essays, and learned to express their thoughts, opinions, and arguments in writing and in intellectual discussions and debates. They have become literate, in every sense of the word, immersed in the culture and language of ideas that is the foundation of a free society and at the heart of the MAPCS values of respect, responsibility, heritage, growth, and community.

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This gathering was the third in a continuing series of get-togethers launched in June 2004. These informal gatherings seek to coalesce VPP’s investor community by leveraging the collective impact of our investors’ philanthropic work, identifying common areas of interest, and more directly engaging them in VPP’s activities. The two earlier investor receptions were hosted at the homes of VPP investors James Kimsey and Governor Mark Warner, co-founder of VPP, and a fall get-together is currently in the planning stage.

Bill and Patricia Smith Melton graciously opened their beautiful home and gardens to VPP investors and other friends on June 23 for an evening featuring the international activities of two VPP investors—Patricia Smith Melton, Founder and Executive Director of PEACE X PEACE, an Internet-based organization that empowers women to connect across cultural divides, and Kathy Bushkin Calvin, who spoke about her work as Executive Vice President and COO of the United Nations Foundation, created in 1997 to promote a more peaceful, prosperous, and just world through the support of the United Nations.

Although Smith Melton and Bushkin are interfacing with the international community in vastly different ways, their work points to many common themes—the importance of community, the need for global access to quality health services, the role of women in the creation of a safe and sustainable global community, the potential impact of networks and organizations that cross traditional boundaries, the importance of respect and shared learning, and the need for new paradigms to solve problems of global proportions. Both women brought focus to the fact that we are living in a very different world today. Changing technological, political, and social dynamics are fundamentally reshaping how the citizens of the globe relate to one another. These dynamics cut across many of the geographic, political, social, ethnic, and economic barriers with which we grew up. And, even though we still live day to day in our local communities, we are tied in vastly different ways to the larger global community. Our awareness of global issues and our willingness to act at a global level will radically influence our success in this shifting paradigm.

Smith Melton told how she came to create PEACE X PEACE: “Once I saw the potential for the impact of connection, communication, consciousness shift, and critical mass, I realized that I’m not retiring after all, that everything that came before was merely preparation for this truly important work.” And Bushkin poignantly linked the two conversations when she shared a saying posted on her refrigerator: “To the world you may be just one person. But to that one person you may be the world.”

Not surprisingly, some of the issues that Smith Melton and Bushkin focus on in their international efforts mirror some of those faced by VPP’s investment partners in serving immigrants and New Americans here in the National Capital Region, which is one of the larger immigration centers in America. Examples of VPP investment partners serving the needs of the region’s international community include the Center for Multicultural Human Services, a national leader in providing culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions for refugees and victims of torture; Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care, which provides services to support individual and family well-being in the Latino community; the Latin American Youth Center, which together with the Archdiocese of Washington is exploring the international roots of many gangs as part of their efforts to prevent gang violence; CentroNía, which, through its Child Development Associate training, provides tangible skills that enable New Americans to run their own daycare center and holistic services that help promote economic opportunity for recent immigrants; and Asian American LEAD, which serves as a bridge to recent Asian immigrants, providing critical educational and integration services.

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VPPNews takes a hiatus for August…see you in September!