College and Career Readiness helps students gain skills and knowledge to navigate their postsecondary endeavors through one-to-one tutoring, college planning, and job training.

The College and Career Readiness Program offers wrap-around support for teens living in Potomac Gardens, Hopkins, and Benning Terrace public housing communities as they prepare for life after high school–whether that means college, learning a trade, or even military service. 

We meet with middle and high school students weekly and throughout the summer, providing one-to-one tutoring, financial aid and college planning, and guidance through DC’s high school lottery process, and the college application process.

Students at Little Lights face systemic barriers to college access and finding a job. Our goal is to provide an ongoing support system to help remove many of the obstacles that keep low income students stuck in a cycle of poverty. 

Reading Heroes helps students develop grade-level literacy skills through one-to-one tutoring.

Each student is paired with a specific tutor for the duration of the semester, sometimes longer, in order to build stability, continuity, and a relationship that aids a student’s academic growth.  Every Tuesday, from 6:00 to 7:00pm, students and tutors work together to complete lesson plans crafted specifically for each student based off of internal assessment results. 

Reading Heroes is a great way to make a direct and meaningful connection to support one of our students.

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) helps students identify, name, and manage their emotions so that they can interact with the world around them in a healthy way.  

SEL helps change the trajectory for children who have experienced trauma and might be manifesting their distress by shutting down, acting out, feeling fatigued, hopeless, etc. Instead, SEL helps reconnect youth to their communities of care and helps them thrive relationally, emotionally, academically, and socially. 

We host SEL sessions weekly and throughout the summer, covering topics like personal boundaries, dealing with sadness, how to cool down when upset, etc. Students can also meet one-to-one with staff trained in SEL at our Homework Club program.

Kids and communities are transformed by personal relationships. When Christian adults commit to mentoring our students, we see students, and their families, thrive.

Students at Little Lights live in either Potomac Gardens,  or Hopkins, or Benning Terrace public housing complexes, under-resourced neighborhoods where 90% of youth live in single-parent, female-headed households that exist on less than $14,000 a year. Without intervention, an estimated 2% of these kids will go on to attend college. These kids want – and need – mentors, and yet are unlikely to have one.

As a Christian mentor, your goal is twofold: To love your mentee as God loves, freely and unconditionally, and to model what it means to love and follow Jesus.

Saturday Drop In Program offers students a safe, structured, and fun place to spend their weekends. Twice​ ​a month​ from 10am-1pm​, a volunteer group of 6-12 provide personal attention to students, as well as organizing a craft project, and supplying packed lunches for all of the students.

Since Saturday Program involves less structured activity, it is an ideal time for staff and volunteers to forge more personal relationships and spend extended quality time with students.​