Summary:

• In 2021, Empowr increased engagement, collaboration, and student happiness within our program. Empowr also increased the number of students served by 500%

• In 2022, Empowr will launch a custom learning platform that allows Empowr to scale nationally and remove technological barriers for students. Empowr also looks to increase its number of students by another 500% to onboard 75 new students.

2021 has been a wild year. We are still in a pandemic, some Redditors took on Wall Street, we gained our first black and woman vice president, and some internet trolls tried to overthrow the government.

We laughed, we cried, we rolled our eyes. As it comes to an end, we should all take this time to reflect on what we have accomplished and what we will accomplish in the next year.

At the beginning of 2021, Empowr had three students and was still trying to figure out many specifics. Classes would take place on Google Meet, where I would lecture, and the students would grow bored of hearing me talk. We adapted our teaching style to increase collaboration and participation throughout the year. 

First, Empowr began to switch to a project-based curriculum. Instead of having students complete many small learning tasks, our students will build a project app to showcase their skills. These projects had a much higher engagement, and students were happier.

Since the pandemic, numerous studies have demonstrated that students were not participating in the distance learning style. Many proposals have come up, such as ensuring students have their cameras on and putting funny backgrounds on your camera. Still, Empowr decided to bring back collaboration to increase participation. Utilizing CoScreen, our students can work together to solve programming challenges as if they were sitting next to each other. This one tool brought our distance learning participation up to in-classroom levels.

Ending the year, Empowr broke ground on EmpowrX. EmpowrX is a classroom learning platform that is set to launch next year. It aims to increase collaboration, remove technological barriers from learning, raise engagement, and allow Empowr to scale nationally. EmpowrX has been a group effort between Kelley, Ivan, Octavio, Kuri, and many other volunteers. 

We also increased our students by 500% and now have 18 students. The funding to accept these students came from multiple donors such as yourself, including a generous grant from the Heidi & Jeffrey of the Hopper-Dean Foundation. All of this is due to your support. Your words of encouragement, your shares on social media, your volunteering, donations and grants. Empowr is only possible because of you.

As we look ahead to 2022, we have a lot to be thankful for and a lot of work to get done.

Our first set of students will graduate in Summer 2022. Chase will be looking to join the workforce as a software developer specializing in iOS Development. Chaz will be pursuing a computer science degree and launching his Graphic Design and UX business.

Empowr will launch EmpowrX for our new students. Doing so will prove our ability to scale our program and showcase results to supporters like you.

In the Fall of 2022, Empowr will look to onboard 75 new students and continue the 500% growth.

These are not minor feats, and we cannot do it without your continued support. Whether you send us encouraging words, make a donation, add us as your Amazon Smile charity, or share our posts. We appreciate your efforts to support Empowr and will continue to do the work that must be done.

Thank you,

Adrian Le'Roy Devezin

Executive Director