Harambee Christian Family Center

Programs: Harambee is an empowering environment for children, youth and families in the northwest pasadena community and beyond. Love, compassion and discipleship abound creating positive sustainable change for generations. We had 40 students enrolled in harambee prep. As of march 2017, our school is accredited through the western association of colleges & schools (wasc). We hosted our 1st pennies for patients fundraiser to benefit leukemia patients. The drive was extremely successful in that our students raised money over the goal. Our harambee childrens choir was requested to perform at several events throughout the year; including disneylands annual celebrate gospel. All 7 of our kindergarten students were promoted to 1st grade. All 5 of our 6th graders were promoted to 7th grade. We hosted 2 spelling bees and our annual book fair was a huge success. We have had approximately 130 volunteers come through harambee prep. In our pre-school, our enrollment was 8 students. 3 of our pre-school students were promoted to kinder. 3 of our pre-schoolers performed with our harambee childrens choir at several venues. Our pre-school director and teacher continue to work with our students to get them ready for kinder. We have had approximately 50 volunteers for our preschool. This year we had over 8 alums graduate from middle school, high school and college. One of our prestigious alumni graduated from wesleyan university with honors in psychology and theatre. Our alums have also come back to help support through volunteering during their summer and winter breaks. We also have a few alums who are studying abroad in europe for the semester as well. This school year we collaborated with church partners to help advance our curriculum in the classroom. For the first time in years harambee was able to purchase 21st century curriculum that will allow for our students to advance to the next level. Each teacher received computers and new technology in their classrooms to implement the new curriculum. We also were able to partner with the school district to send our teachers to training seminars where they learned about thinking maps, a critical thinking tool that helps students to write down their thoughts in strategic maps that help them to synthesize information for reading and writing. Students also learned more about nutrition and physical health through the physical ed. Teacher teaching health class twice a week. This school year we also started a program to incentivise students hard work in the classroom by rewarding students who excelled with the opportunity to have lunch with the principal. Every other thursday students were able to have lunch on or off campus with the principal. At least 75% of all the students earned the opportunity to have lunch with the principal. We saw an increase in classroom participation as well as test scores improved.

our after-school program continued its collaboration with maranatha high school, south pasadena high school, flintridge prep, muir high school and pasadena high school students to provide tutoring and homework help for our students. Due to these collaborations, we continued to see a decrease in the number of students not completing their homework assignments. We also collaborated with jack & jill who provided arts & crafts for our students. Our students enjoyed martial arts classes once a week. We had a teenager come to our after school program to do a science lab project. We had approximately 120 volunteers throughout the year. Our summer program hosted 35 students. We were able to invite 8 summer campers to attend harambee prep for the 2016-2017 school year. 3 of those students enrolled. We had about 150 volunteers throughout the year. Harambee youth leadership & empowerment summer program hosted 8 local teenagers who received a stipend for helping at our summer campers, at our urban farm and our community garden. For 6 weeks, these students also visited colleges to prepare for college, visited a local credit union to understand financial literacy, took nutrition classes to understand how to make healthy food choices, and did mock interviews to be prepared to enter the workforce. The list can go on and on. We have 10 volunteers during this time.

community needs programs: we provided emergency assistance to 20 northwest pasadena neighbors for various reasons. In serving a low income environment, we often help members of the community who struggle to pay their rent or experience a food shortage. We also support families who suffer from loss due to death or illness, who need help with funeral costs. We had about 10 work groups with an estimate of 12 people in each group come to volunteer to help our community and harambee. Work groups help alleviate some of the schools infrastructure cost by painting classrooms and deep cleaning kitchens and areas that commonly fill with debris from all the trees on campus. The harambee community garden has hosted our local neighbors with a free plot to grow healthy food. We hosted several events throughout the year to name a few: provided water and lemonade for