Our very own Education Coordinator, Raymond Bell, founded the HOPE (Helping Other People Excel) Project in 2010 with a simple mission: to launch careers for young people and provide them with opportunities larger than just minimum wage.

"I want to put an end to young adult violence, and I feel the best way to do it is with meaningful employment. I became frustrated with the lack of quality career-training programs available to young adults. With career schools like TESST and EVEREST, the bar is very low for quality training. Very few, if any, young adults from Southeast leave their schools prepared to compete with today's highly educated and skilled workforce. So, I challenged myself to do something about it", says Bell.

On Tuesday November 8, The HOPE Project held its annual town hall, in historic Anacostia. The event focused on the topic of unemployment and had more than 170 attendees, many of which were under the age of 25.

The Project recruited a panel of experts from the Human Resources community, who had experience in recruiting, staffing and internship programs. Included in this panel was DDCA's Vice President of Human Resources, Don Smialowicz. Aside from assisting with this panel, Don has agreed to work more closely with the HOPE Project by volunteering to conduct interview-coaching sessions with the HOPE Project students.

DDCA thanks both Raymond and Don for their efforts in bettering our communities!

Read more about the HOPE Project:

The HOPE Project program is a 100% volunteer career-training program designed to prepare socially and economically disadvantaged young adults for careers as help desk and application support professionals.  The program is sponsored by the International Graduate University, a 501(c)3. 

The program is in its third year; the most recent graduating class has a combined average starting salary of $39,000.  Many of the graduates were unemployed before enrolling in the program; the others were under-employed.  The HOPE Project graduates have accepted employment offers from; Comcast, Webster Data & Communications, HP Enterprise Services, Evolver, MindBank, RCG Inc., ShareTech Solutions, Battelle and many other companies.  Here is a link to the student success page—http://www.hopeprojectdc.org/Success-Stories.aspx

In addition to the town hall, the HOPE Project held an information session to recruit candidates for the fall class.  Although there were only 4 slots available, 118 young adults submitted applications.  The program has been very well received in the community and is looked upon as a bright light by many young people who have nicknamed it “Harvard of the Hood”.  The program is much more than just a career training program—the students become active participants in the community by teaching others how to send email, shop online, and watch YouTube videos. 

Here is a link to some articles about the program.

http://www.hopeprojectdc.org/Press.aspx

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