education & the arts project

The Fred Somerset Memorial Scholarship Program is pleased to announce The Education and the Arts Project for the period of October 2024 through May  2025. Additional details, including session announcements, are coming soon. 

The Education and the Arts Project is a new project which seeks to promote cultural sensitivity and diversity, equity, and community development. Our project will benefit the residents of the historic Capitol Hill and Anacostia communities in Washington, D.C.; Alexandria, Virginia, specifically Hybla Valley and surrounding neighborhoods. Our organization discovered these neighborhoods have the highest obesity rates and lowest life expectancy and incomes. They primarily depend on community clinics, emergency rooms, and the multiple urgent care facilities in the area to seek needed health services. Residents in our targeted neighborhoods are also less likely to seek mental or physical health assistance compared to Black and other minority residents in communities with higher income rates. Black and other minority residents in our targeted communities are two times more likely to suffer a chronic disease such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes that is linked to obesity, poor dietary choices, and limited access to healthcare providers. By using the early contributions of African American culture and arts in the areas of health, food cultivation, and finance, The Education and the Arts Project will seek to: 1) address the need for access to personal and individually catered healthcare by emphasizing the importance of healthier food selections to combat obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, as well as promoting increased physical exercise. Our physical health workshop will educate our participants on the impact of food and exercise for overall quality of life and improved vitality; 2) provide mental health awareness by increasing the early detection of mental health issues. Our mental health workshop will educate our participants on anxiety and depressive disorder, learning disabilities, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); 3) promote and improve financial literacy. Our financial workshops will educate our participants in decreasing long-term financial pitfalls, divulge processes to promote financial literacy by teaching strategies for the development of short-and-long-term savings and investment plans, illustrate family financial planning by using budgets, financial and debt management tools, addressing wealth disparity, and stressing the importance of using life insurance as a generational wealth practice; and 4) eradicate food insecurity. Our home-grown gardens workshop will educate our participants on planting and growing sustainable fruits and vegetables at home.