Heads Up
http://www.headsup-dc.org
645 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20003
202-544-4468

Founded in 1996

Executive Director and Co-founder: Darin McKeever
President, Board of Directors: Brian Weed
Staff: 20 full-time staff, 280 part-time tutors (28 full-time staff and 420 part-time tutors by the end of 2003)
2005 Budget: $3M

Mission and History
The mission of Heads Up: A University Neighborhood Initiative is to help provide children and youth from low-income neighborhoods with the academic skills and learning opportunities they need to succeed, and to provide college students with the opportunity to understand and help meet those needs in order to promote their development as leaders motivated to effect social change.

Founded in 1996 by Vincent Pan and Darin McKeever, Heads Up runs after-school tutoring, mentoring, and summer learning programs for low-income children and youth in Washington, DC, by enlisting college students as tutors and mentors who are encouraged to learn as much as they teach.

While in college, Pan and McKeever helped run Harvard University's community service program at the Phillips Brooks House. After graduation they won fellowships from the Stride Rite and Echoing Green foundations to establish Heads Up and began their first after-school program site in November 1996 in Barry Farm—arguably one of the toughest neighborhoods in the District.

The program has since expanded to eight locations throughout the District of Columbia (half are located east of the Anacostia River) in partnership with DC public schools and the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation. Heads Up serves more than 655 students both after school and during the summer. Heads Up tutors and mentors participate in a host of Heads Up service-learning, training, and leadership building activities.

Services
Heads Up's approach to programming has three components:

• Heads Up focuses on strengthening families:
  We make a commitment to working with the same families year round and year after year, and we develop our programs with particular needs and circumstances in mind. Heads Up rarely serves only one person in the family - three out of four enrolled in our programs have multiple family members participating. For example, we might teach a child how to read, tutor an older sibling for the SAT, and improve a parent's writing skills. Moreover, Heads Up enlists family members as partners in providing services. Currently we hire parents to work in and outside of the classrooms, engage additional parents as volunteer aides and field trip chaperones, and hire older siblings and other teens year-round as junior tutors.
  
  
• Heads Up engages university students in service learning: We believe that university students are the ideal tutors and mentors in many ways. They are often enthusiastic, compassionate, and idealistic. Undergraduates also have more flexible schedules and fewer professional commitments. And with over half of our college students comprised of people of color, and nearly 75 percent attending college on financial aid, Heads Up ensures that children in our program can look up to young adults from similar and dissimilar backgrounds. We provide extensive ongoing training, coaching, and supervision to keep program quality high and accountable to the community. At the same time, Heads Up helps college students explore, through formal reflection seminars, how they might serve society in the long run. As noted by one Heads Up undergraduate, "It made me re-evaluate my values and beliefs. It changed me for the better."
  
  
• Heads Up strengthens communities through university, neighborhood, and school partnerships: These partnerships align and leverage resources in support of at-risk children while ensuring that a variety of institutional stakeholders share ownership. Our school partners provide essential classroom space and training assistance. Our university partners reinforce volunteer recruitment, fund work-study positions for tutors, and give students academic credits for their work. Our neighborhood partners update us about community events and help us hire neighborhood residents for specific Heads Up employment opportunities - this year, we expect to return nearly $200,000 in salaries back to local families via part-time positions. Together, these partnerships create a broader Heads Up community capable of opening new doors and building bridges between traditionally segregated populations