Educational services have always been a central part of Jubilee Housing’s mission and program offerings, and a large part of our Justice Housing® model and Jubilee Year principles of Filling Gaps, Breaking Down Boundaries, and Resetting the System. Over the past 50 years, this has taken many forms, with many people following their inspiration and passions to start different programs that have shaped our current Youth Services program and spun off into partner organizations such as Jubilee Jumpstart and Sitar Arts Center. We also work with other partners, such as Martha’s Table, to provide its Healthy Start early childhood programming to the neighborhood at our Maycroft building. This month, we look back at the founding of some of these programs, such as Jubilee Children’s House, Good Shepherd Ministries, and the future of Youth Services with special interviews with Children’s House founder Nona Beth Cresswell, current Director of Youth Services Audrey Walker, and past program participants. Through these programs, Jubilee and its partners promote academic advancement and personal development to empower youth and strengthen opportunities for future success. We believe every person has in them what is needed to live a fulfilling life and that access to opportunities helps surface these inherent gifts. We believe in the self-determination of each person and working in partnership with one another to discover our gifts.
50th Anniversary Stories
History, Growth, and Impact of Jubilee Housing’s Youth Services Program
Q&A with Audrey Walker, Jubilee Housing Director of Youth Services
Audrey Walker, the director of Jubilee Housing’s Youth Services program, shares insights into its history, growth, and impact. Under her leadership, the program has evolved to provide educational support and opportunities for Jubilee residents and young people in the community. In this Q&A article, Audrey discusses the program’s successes and her vision for its continued growth.
Tell us about yourself.
I am a Washington, DC native and a mother of two. My background is in early childhood education and special education. I like to call myself an educational practitioner because education runs through everything that I do. It is the foundation of what I do to this day.
I used to be a DC Public School (DCPS) teacher for seven years. A lot of the DC public schools’ curriculums and models were very rigid. They did not have a lot of space for building relationships with those that we serve. There were some touches here and there, but there were not a lot of intentional practices built into DCPS at the time.
When I started having children of my own, it became a little bit difficult for me to navigate being a teacher and a mom at the same time. So, I looked for a career that was in early childhood education that focused on communities and families and provided me with an opportunity to be more intentional with my practice. I joined the Jubilee Housing team in 2014. When I started, my vision was to come in and work more closely with youth and families on a smaller scale since I was coming from DCPS where I was working with a lot of children at one time. I felt like I could be more intentional and more effective working with smaller groups and working in community-based programs. I began as an Early Start program associate. Then I was promoted to the coordinator position and worked a little bit in our Family Resource Center, that is what it was called at the time, as a Family Resource Manager. I went back to Early Start as a coordinator and then I was promoted to director about five years ago.
How does education fit into Jubilee’s mission?
Education opens doors universally. Jubilee is committed to always creating opportunities for our residents to thrive. Sometimes when people hear about education, they think about formal schooling or college, but education comes in various formats. Jubilee does a great job of educating and inspiring our residents and our clients to reach for the stars. We are interested in what our residents and our clients want to learn about. We go out and bring that programming to the community. So, education is woven into everything that Jubilee does because we are constantly striving to listen to our residents, listen to our clients, and provide programming based on their needs.
What is the origin of Youth Services?
[In 1984, Good Shepherd Ministries was established as an after-school center offering academic tutoring and life skills lessons to children in the afternoons and evenings.] Around 2008, Jubilee Housing hired Meredith Driscoll to run the after-school program. It was then renamed Jubilee Youth Services. At the time, staffing doubled, and the program was split into three program centers. The first was Early Start which is Kindergarten through 3rd grades. Activity Zone is 4th through 6th grades. The Teen Center, then called the Teen Renaissance, is 7th through 12th grades. The rest is history. Jubilee Housing hired Meredith Driscoll to run the after-school program. It was then renamed Jubilee Youth Services. At the time, staffing doubled, and the program was split into three program centers. The first was Early Start which is Kindergarten through 3rd grades. Activity Zone is 4th through 6th grades. The Teen Center, then called the Teen Renaissance, is 7th through 12th grades. The rest is history.
Could you talk more about Youth Services’ programs and why these programs are important?
Jubilee Youth Services provides out-of-school-time, after-school, and summer camp programming for kindergarten through 12th graders, specifically for Jubilee Housing residents. We also open our doors to the surrounding community. A key aspect of our programs is that parents know that their children are safe, and they are in a supportive environment around people that care about their children’s wellbeing. Those are the main reasons why people send their children to us.
Across all three of our centers, our goals are to improve outcomes and academics, health and wellness, community service, belonging, and social-emotional growth. We do this by employing a youth development approach and we aim to serve the whole child through strong relationship-building and community focus. We want to provide our students with exposure, opportunities, skills, and resources to become their best selves emotionally, mentally, physically, academically, and spiritually.
One of our main goals is to focus on academic achievement. We do that by providing onsite one-on-one high-impact tutoring in all three of our programs. We partner with American University, and they have sent college tutors to us every year since the pandemic where the tutors work one-on-one with our students. During COVID, some of our students took a hit academically. Now we are about four years out from the start of the pandemic and we are seeing our students balance out where they were academically prior. That is the hope that even though the school is doing its job, we are reinforcing what the school is doing in the after-school program.
We also want to increase the pro-social behavior of our students. That is another major objective. Pro-social behavior is a form of positive behavior that benefits others. Pro-social behavior focuses on how and why people help each other. We ingrain those skills and concepts in our students early on. As they move through our programs and when they eventually age out and become adults, they will have those skills to be empathetic towards others, to want to make a change in their community, and to want to help people. Our method uses a research-based social, emotional curriculum, and art therapy. We ingrain those concepts and everything that we do, day in and day out. Our programs are highly inclusive, and we want our students to feel safe coming to our programs to express themselves and to be themselves but also to learn how they can be the best productive citizens, especially in their community.
Additionally, we want to increase our family involvement in high-quality programming. Not only do we work with our students, but we know that family is the key to getting our students to where they need to be. Every year, we provide in-house family programming. We do need assessments to find out what programming we are going to provide. We integrate need assessments in our registration processes to get a snapshot of some vital needs that our families have. What are some things they want to learn and be educated about? What support do they need for their children academically? From that data, we can go out, and even if we do not have the resources on hand, we can make referrals or bring in partners to provide workshops and seminars. That is the main way that we are supporting our family. We invite our families to be a part of Jubilee activities. We integrate our families into our program. We have had a parent council where we have three or four parents meet and inform Youth Services staff about what they like, anything they want to change, and any concerns that might arise.
We have a STEAM program to improve intellectual ability. It is the same as academic achievement, but STEAM is a way that we are trying to get our students more exposed to those concepts around science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. The philosophy is that after-school programming, especially summer camp, needs to be fun and engaging. We use hands-on activities and field trips that infuse with STEAM and math literacy concepts. We did research about six years ago. Our research found that black and brown youth are not prepared to enter those fields in the next 20 years and that out-of-school-time program is the optimum time to expose our youth to STEAM careers, bring in professionals who can talk about what they do, and use research-based curriculums that have science projects.
As I mentioned, in STEAM the A stands for arts. We partner with Sitar Arts Center. Every year our kids take theatre, digital art, and graphic arts. They learn how to play an instrument and take various classes at Sitar Arts Center so that they can also be exposed to that realm of life, the art part of life. With all those things combined, we are enhancing our students’ intellectual abilities.
The National Geographic provided STEM kits that showed Jubilee campers how chemical reactions work. By combining various chemicals with watercolor markers, they “grew” various types of crystal trees!
Finally, I want to talk about our college and career prep. Jubilee to College scholarship is a program that provides gap funding for our seniors and residents who are interested in pursuing post-secondary degrees, obtaining a certification, or pursuing workforce development. It is effective in helping students get over the hurdle of paying for college. We just wrapped up our end-of-the-year Jubilee to College scholarship program. We were honored to see there were four college graduates this year who have been through the pipeline of our programs from early start through Jubilee to College scholarship. They finished their four-year degrees and are now applying for their master’s programs.
It is a testament that what we ingrain in our programs has a positive impact. Although on different developmental levels, we focus on the same concepts year in and year out.
Could you discuss your advocacy efforts to secure critical funding for Youth Services programs from the DC government and other entities?
About four years ago, I was asked to be part of the DC Action Network. The DC Action Network is an advocacy organization in Washington, DC and it is a collective of out-of-school-time (OST) providers. We meet weekly, and we talk about pressing issues that face out-of-school programming and community-based organizations. This includes everything from the mayor’s budget, budget cuts, to security cost and youth. [Audrey was named Youth Champion of the Year by DC Action Network in 2021.]
We are currently working on Universal OST legislation. If you are familiar with the DC lottery, you cannot go to any school you want. You have to apply through the lottery and fingers crossed you get the school that you choose. They are trying to do a similar thing with out-of-school-time programming. Because there is simply not enough out-of-school-time programming for the amount of youth that need it in DC, we want to present this legislation that provides preferential access to students directly in their community, so it is more equitable. Students will no longer have to travel across the city to get to after-school programs because the slots in their community or after-school programs are filled up by people who are not living directly in their community. With the trickle effect, there will be more community building. The hope is to provide more community-based programming so that youth have interesting, fun, and engaging activities in their immediate communities.
Additionally, I often testify in front of the DC Council. I think I have testified four times this year. My testimony is more about letting the council members know who Jubilee is and what we do, key issues related to the budget and sustaining funding, and making OST access more equitable. Those are the main three things that I have advocated for this year.
What is your vision for the future growth of Youth Services, and what resources and support are needed to achieve this vision?
I see us striving for more capacity. Right now, the capacity for our early start program is 16, the activity zone is 25, and the teen center is 30. That is based on where we are located. We are in the basements of three Jubilee apartment buildings. Jubilee has acquired several new buildings over the past years that are in development that will have space for us to renovate, expand, and provide more slots. I also would love to pick up a grade. Currently, we are Kindergarten through 12th grade. I would love to pick up pre-K. Our Teen Center is 7th grade through 12th grade, and I would love to split the center so that we have a middle school teen center specifically for our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, and our 9th through 12th graders can have their own center.
Additionally, my vision is to expand services to provide more programming. Currently, we operate during the week. In the summertime, we operate during the week, but we do not have any weekend programming. We do not have programming when there are winter breaks or spring breaks or when DC public schools are closed for professional development. I have a vision of developing the program to serve not only Jubilee Housing youth participants, but to expand Youth Services to youth and Jubilee residents who might not be enrolled in our programs. That will call for programming during non-traditional hours. If we are able to pull that off, the impact on Jubilee Housing’s residents is going to be even greater.
To accomplish this, we are going to need a lot of money, more staffing, and more space. We have a great staff. We have a lot of resources and materials, but that all costs money. With the necessary funding, my vision can become a reality within the next two to three years.
Right now, we are grant-funded, but we are not fully sustained. The grant does not fully cover all our programs, which means sometimes Jubilee’s operating budget must pick up some of the slack. That is another vision of mine to get our program fully funded and fully stable so that it is not needed for Jubilee to pay out of our operating budget. So, it calls for more fundraising efforts. If anyone is interested in helping fulfill our needs, consider contributing to our programming or visiting us and witnessing what we have to offer.
We love to have volunteers come and work with our youth. We love volunteers that come with a certain expertise and knowledge. As I mentioned, we are a STEAM program, so we are looking for people in the community who are in those careers who can inspire and spark interest in our youth.
If you are a program partner, you do things specifically with youth, or have something that you think our students might be interested in, please contact us. Let’s talk. We are constantly trying to grow, be innovative, and keep our students engaged and excited about learning. We are always striving for the next level. I consider us high quality, but I know we can be an even higher quality and that does not happen with us alone. It is a partnership with the community.
If you are a community-based organization or you just have a gift, a talent, or something you would love to share with our youth and our community, by all means, please let us know. I have been with Jubilee Housing for 10 years and it has been a really good 10 years. I love coming to work. I love what I do. I am appreciative of Jubilee Housing and how we have kept our footprint in the Adams Morgan neighborhood and how we are a true and tested housing provider. Jubilee is a model for a lot of organizations, not only in DC but around the country. I am proud to be part of an organization that is so intentional and provides residents in the community with the highest quality programming we can do.
Interested in supporting Youth Services, contact us: info@jubileehousing.org. Donate to support Youth Service’s Summer Camp: Support Camp Jubilee!