Save After School

The Imani Family Center is a longtime partner of Cincinnati Public Schools, including Frederick Douglass School. We have partnered with Frederick Douglass Elementary School for the past five years as the free after school program provider. For this school year, Imani no longer has 21 Century funding to provide the free after school program for Douglass students. Yet the children and families of Douglass deserve to have an exemplary after school program because research shows that when students receive extended time to learn, when the student teacher ratio is smaller and when hands on experiences are provided, student achievement improves. Rather than being home alone with little or no help or hanging on the street, students can attend the Imani H.E.A.R.T. After School Program and receive the help that they need to improve and extend their literacy and math skills and have fun.  The HEART program provides Health, Enrichment, Academics, Recreation and Technology experiences for our students. Imani has made a commitment to provide high quality programming for their students in an effort to close achievement gaps and educational disparities.

 The Search Institute has identified developmental assets that are crucial to children’s resilience and positive development. If children develop identified positive traits and behaviors, they are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors, such as drug use, sexual activity or crime. These results were true regardless of the youth’s race, age, sex, and/or economic level. However, preventing high–risk or negative behavior is not enough to ensure that youth are ready to assume the responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. Children need skills and adequate family, peer, school, and community support. The After School HEART Program helps children acquire the skills they need to succeed. After School guidelines suggest when after school programs are in place, parent involvement rises, discipline referrals decline, test scores increase, and student mobility decreases. Consequently, we need HELP in funding our after school program! The ODJFS Child Care voucher funding system should support 25 -30 students whose parents qualify for the child care service because they are enrolled in a school or they have to be employed. For the other children and families that don’t qualify, due to inadequate income, we would like to provide scholarships for them to attend the after school program for free. Consequently, we need 42 student scholarships at the cost of for each child, which will cover the cost for the entire school year. Please help us in this fundraising effort! We usually enroll about 100 students who attend our program during the course of the school year. Our average daily attendance is about 60-70 students each day.

 Imani Family Center plans to offer the HEART program in partnership with Frederick Douglass Elementary and other partners.

Our proposed efforts will seek to provide academic enrichment efforts beyond the school's core curriculum, and will address the broad range of learning skills and challenges of students served within the targeted population. Ultimately, our program will provide supports, materials, and exercises for students (and families) that build vocabulary skills and reading comprehension, both confirmed through educational research as key components for improving literacy, in addition the children will have fun and enjoy coming to after school!