Athletes United for Social Justice, Inc.

Our work is divided into three main program areas: (1) school-based and community-based adolescent health education; (2) NCAA student-athlete social engagement and leadership development; and (3) curriculum development, evaluation, and communication.

Through our school-based and community-based adolescent health education programs, our goal is to drive down adolescent health disparities in our city.

Through our NCAA student-athlete social engagement and leadership development programs, we aim to empower our student-athlete volunteers to become agents of social change.

Through our curriculum development, evaluation, and communication programs, we aim to become a national thought leader in generating, testing, and sharing best practices for youth development.

Our strategy for driving down adolescent health disparities is to scale up our evidence-based health education programs in DC's highest need schools. We recruit and train NCAA athletes to serve as facilitators of our curriculum, and they deliver the curriculum in middle school P.E. and health classes once per week.

Our strategy for empowering our student-athlete volunteers to become agents of social change is multi-pronged. For all of our volunteers, we provide cultural competency training, curriculum facilitation training, and foundational knowledge about health disparities facing youth in Washington, DC. For a select group of student-athletes, we provide specialized training in program management, and then we provide an opportunity for these student-athletes to practice program management skills by running our health education trainings and monitoring the implementation of our school-based programs. Finally, we offer organizational management opportunities by employing young student-athletes to carry out the core operations of our organization, including governance, strategy, resource mobilization, evaluation, and financial management.

Our strategy for becoming a national thought leader in generating, testing, and sharing best practices for youth development is to carry out rigorous research and evaluation, as well as to publish and present our work at conferences.

We developed our programs and established rapport in DC through years of grassroots growth. Our current staff includes an Executive Director, a Director of Programs, two Program Managers, and more than 50 volunteers. Our Executive Director has been involved in the leadership of The Grassroot Project since its beginning in 2009. He is a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in Public Health from the University of Oxford, and he has also served as a global health consultant for the United Nations and a large HIV/AIDS donor agency. He has brokered partnerships, raised funds, and overseen the implementation and evaluation of our programs for more than nine years. Our Director of Programs has worked as a community organizer, health advocate, and program manager for more than 8 years. Our Program Managers were handpicked from more than 300 applicants through our partnership with Global Health Corps. They bring extensive training in public health and nonprofit management into their roles. Last but not least, our volunteers serve as the core implementers of our organization's school-based programs. They are all between the ages of 18-22, and they come from four local universities. All volunteers undergo a two-weekend training to become effective program facilitators.

Since 2009, The Grassroot Project has trained more than 900 NCAA athletes to facilitate 8-session health education programs for more than 5,000 youth in 58 DC public and charter schools. A randomized controlled trial demonstrated that our programs have been effective in significantly improving health literacy among DC middle school students.

While we will continue to implement our evidence-based sexual health program, we aim to extend both the breadth and depth of our curriculum. Over the next three years, we plan to develop curricular modules that address mental and physical health disparities amongst DC's youth. We see these additional areas of youth development as critical to the overall resilience of DC's youth, and we believe our athletes are well-equipped to take them on.