WASHINGTON—In the background, usually unnoticed, employees and volunteers at two Washington nonprofits work tirelessly to change the lives of children and teenagers living in tough circumstances. And they’re doing it the hard way, one kid at a time.
Ahdoot told The Epoch Times that the program’s name is a nod to children’s literature—Dr. Seuss’s “Horton Hears a Who!”—and the organization’s commitment to fostering a love of reading.
The program has had phenomenal success. Students have maintained a seven-year streak of 100 percent on-time graduation. The group has been operating in the area since 1989 and represents a truly grassroots effort.
Horton’s Kids began when Capitol Hill staffer Karin Walser had the idea of bussing students from Anacostia to a tutoring program at the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill. Originally, Horton’s Kids only had access to a two-bedroom apartment for use as an operating facility.
It has grown since then but has purposely remained limited in size and scope, serving only residents of Stanton Oaks and Wellington Park.
In 2023, it opened a third center, a former church building that it calls “Horton’s Hub,” conveniently located halfway between the neighborhoods it serves. Ahdoot said the building’s owner, Pastor Rudolph Stewart, bypassed more lucrative offers to sell it to Horton’s.
This allowed Horton’s to expand its reach, and it is beginning to take students who reside or attend school within a half-mile radius of Horton’s Hub.
“We are still keeping the geography that we serve very small, and that’s just so we don’t dilute the sort of intensity or the quality of what we’re doing in this particular part of Anacostia,” Ahdoot said.
But it’s not all about academics. Horton’s addresses gaps in the whole community structure, operating food pantries and distributing diapers. Volunteers bring bags of goodies during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The kids are also treated to games, parties, and the occasional camping trip.
The program has been successful, but the uphill battle remains. Anacostia is a low-income, high-crime neighborhood. Rahaman Kilpatrick, Horton’s adviser for community engagement, said the program has to keep safety precautions in place in case of an active shooter situation.
But he also said Horton’s is pushing anti-violence initiatives through podcasts such as “HK Couch,” which discusses gun violence, and “Rap Sessions,” which highlights the successes of its alumni.
Lean on Me: D.C. Family and Youth Initiative
While Horton’s is addressing education and food security gaps, D.C. Family and Youth Initiative (DCFYI) tackles a completely different problem: emotional, moral, and logistics support for teenagers in foster care. This is a demographic that often slips through the cracks, because foster and adoption rates tend to drop as kids get older. The teens become adults and “age out” of foster care, sometimes losing the only support system they have ever known.DCFYI Executive Director and co-founder Susan Punnett told The Epoch Times, “We are an organization that was created to connect teens who are in foster care with adults who will make what become lasting commitments to them.”
DCFYI does background checks on potential volunteers to vet them for safety. It holds mixer events such as kickball games and scavenger hunts to allow the teenagers and mentors to get to know each other in a no-pressure environment.
Teens will suggest potential mentors to partner with, and vice versa. Then DCFYI will match them in a mentorship program that lasts “for as long as the young people want those adults to be in their lives,” according to Punnett.
“Our volunteer group is, I think, about as diverse a group of people as you could find,” she said.
“Our focus is relationships.”
DCFYI casts a broader net than Horton’s. Their work extends across the entire Washington area and into Maryland’s Prince George’s County. The clientele is about 99 percent African American, according to Punnett.
Her work with DCFYI grew out of a time when Washington’s welfare program was taken out of the hands of the local government because of alleged mismanagement.
“I kind of backed into this work and got hooked on it,” Punnett said. “Part of what struck me from where I was working in the receivership was teens who are really amazing young people and deserve a lot better than the system does for them.”
She began in the finance department before moving into a role as an administrator for resource development, where she worked in recruiting, licensing, and monitoring foster parents.
“It was in that role that I started to delve into creative ways child welfare agencies could help more teens be adopted,” she said.
Mentors tend to go above and beyond for their clients. One volunteer who asked to remain anonymous told The Epoch Times that she and her husband paid for their mentee’s college dorm room essentials and helped their mentee move in when classes began. Many of the students are first-generation college attendees.
The volunteers seemed motivated by a recognition that the teenagers had endured a great deal of undeserved trauma, coupled with a desire to heal that hurt as much as possible.
One volunteer stressed that ordinary events can become complicated for foster kids, mentioning a student who had to navigate the first week of college while simultaneously being switched to a new social worker and foster family.
“There’s no consistency in terms of who is on their team, really,” the volunteer said. “Losing a social worker is really tough for a teen in foster care, if it’s all they’ve known for the past few years in terms of consistency for adults.”
A mentor named Samantha pointed out that the minor hurdles that all teens face can seem insurmountable to foster kids, and this is where DCFYI shines. Mentors are there to offer the needed support for teenage rites of passage, such as a first job interview.
“Who’s helping you prep for that?” she said. “Who’s making sure you get there early, who’s making sure you’re well dressed and that you know what types of questions to ask and how to respond?”
DCFYI mentors fill that gap. The group also throws an annual group birthday party for all its teenagers.
Mentors don’t just show up at the graduations; they might, for example, also pay for their mentees to get their hair done first. And they are perhaps the only ones cheering as a student’s name is called and he or she walks across the stage to receive a diploma.
In short, the mentors do what a family does, but they do it for kids who have never experienced a stable family life.
Another volunteer, Maggie, has mentored only one student but has poured all her energy into this former stranger for years, becoming a touchstone in times of trouble. Their relationship continued even after Maggie moved from the Washington area to Alabama three years ago.
“We obviously don’t see each other very often, but I still feel very connected,” she said. “We FaceTime, we text ... definitely weekly, if not more than that.”
Maggie offered guidance when her mentee expressed a desire to go into vocational medicine and helped her get the required certification.
“I really value being able to dedicate a lot of one-on-one time and attention to her. So the other beauty about the program is that it really is not a numbers game,” she said.
“The things that she’s facing are just so hard that I’m really grateful that I get to do that. And I feel like if I had more than one person, it would be a little bit more overwhelming.”
Like Horton’s, DCFYI has obstacles to overcome. It receives no government funding and is kept afloat by a few generous donors. It hosts an annual fundraiser, “Establishing Roots,” but like many nonprofits, the group struggles to get adequate funding, Punnett said.
“Part of the funding issue is that we don’t fit neatly into a box. We’re not just a mentoring program, we’re not strictly an adoption program,” she said. “But we match youth with mentors and help some find adoptive families. We’re not a housing or employment program, but we help young people, especially those who have aged out of foster care, find and afford housing and find and be able to accept new jobs.”
It also connects them with alternative educational training voucher programs such as Job Corps, Year Up, and Americorps.
Finding adoptive parents for teenagers is a perpetual challenge, Punnet said.
“There are so many teens all across this country who are in foster care and hoping to be adopted,” she said, “but [there are] nowhere near enough adoptive families for older children.”
