The parts that make up the whole of Project E.D.U.

We have many clubs and operations and programs within our organization so that no matter what it is that a person is interested in they can become involved in their community through our organization. So you may ask, how can a person get involved? The programs we have are still growing as more are being thought up and developed but currently are as follows:

• Academic Coaching
  
• Art Education Club
  
• Operation Bookshelf
  
• Philly Eco Kids (PEK)
  
• Urban Roots
  

These are fairly self explanatory names but I want to tell you a little bit about the plans and goals of each program.

-Academic Coaching is a mentoring program where we go into schools during class time and assist kids with homework assignments, and basic reading and math skills. This is so that they have more help available than just the teacher and also so that we can see what areas in each school needs the most attention for the students to achieve better.

-Art Education Club focuses on creative projects and has teachers and teachers assistants (volunteers for our club who have gotten special clearances to teach in schools) and we run workshops on all different art forms with students at temple and local artists and musicians. One of the major goals of this project is the mural project. This is a plan the organization has had since the creation of Project E.D.U last year. We want to collaborate with the community to design and paint a visible mural that both the Temple student body and North Philly community can enjoy. We have been granted a wall on one of the new builds however the specifics of when we can being are vague. So in the meantime we will work to build 3 smaller temporary and movable murals to keep interest and get people involved. Just call it practice!

-Operation Bookshelf I have already mentioned in my last blog and won't go into the same detail here. This is the project where we are building from scratch, (collecting books, sorting and data basing, building the shelves, and finally installing small classroom libraries into schools. We are starting with Kensington Business HS because that is where we did our academic coaching last year and Project E.D.U. they had no library, so they were a large part of the inspiration for this project.

-PhillyEcoKids is very similar to the academic coaching program we have in that it is a basic mentoring program. The focus here though is environmental issues and empowering the kids in this problem by telling them why it is important and how they can do little things that have a bigger impact. This program is after school because it is not about academics as much as it is about inspiring youth to do more for our planet.

-Urban Roots is a program that evolved from Philly Eco Kids. At Dunbar last year we had the good fortune of rebuilding the roof garden and we found a lot of people had a big interest in gardening. We also had other organizations come forward and want to be involved in a project like this. So through some collaboration and brain power we now have Urban Roots. The goal here is to show kids how to build and maintain an urban farm, and then how to sell the goods and produce at a local farmer's market. We are working very closely with ESA entrepreneurial Student Association, and also the Temple Community Garden Club.

So these are the programs we currently have up and running and I will keep you posted over the semester to our progress and great successes. Thanks for reading!