Monday, April 21, 2014

April showers bring...

April showers bring May flowers and this year it seems like a lot of other exciting opportunities as well! We have so much to be thankful for here at St. Mark Youth Enrichment and much of it is because of you and our community!

Earlier this month we received notification that we received a 21st Century Community Learning Centers continuation grant. This grant is a 5 year grant that will help fund the before and after school programs that we provide to at-risk youth in Dubuque. This is a pretty hefty grant so we are extremely grateful to all of our partners throughout the community and tri-state area in this endeavor!

We were also contacted by Dyersville Elementary, a school in the Western Dubuque Community School District, about a summer learning program. With changes in state legislation and working to be proactive, they wanted to partner with us to get their community even more engaged. We are thrilled to be working with them this year to do a pilot summer learning program with Dyersville Elementary and St. Francis Xavier Catholic School in Dyersville.

Hiring is well underway for our Summer Program here at St. Mark Youth Enrichment and we already have 50 children registered to attend this 6 week program that begins mid-March.

Gallery of Growing, a fundraiser we are doing with the Dubuque Rescue Mission, is also set to go and we have over 100 pieces of artwork donated by community members that will be auctioned off May 1st at 6:30 here at St. Mark. There will be an open house on April 29th if you want to take a sneak peek!

We are also gearing up for Great Give Day on May 6th, a national day of online giving, with local and national matches!

Amid all of these exciting developments and programs we have going on, one of the most exciting things is seeing how the students develop in our program. One of our site staff shared this: "I have tons of big reading books and when they rotate to this station they can choose what ever they want to read. Well, today they broke out in song! This is just one reason I love my job!"

Thank you for continuing to support us! Watch us grow!



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