Three students from Centreville High School received one of the 27 Student Peace Awards for their youth-led charitable organization, Level the Field. The recipients of this award, sisters Joanne and Angela Park and treasurer Abigail Daniel, were honored at a reception on March 10 where U.S Representative Gerry Connolly introduced a Resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives listing all the recipients and recognizing them as “active in promoting peace or removing the causes of conflict.”
Level the Field is a 501c3 youth-led charitable organization created to help students in
underserved communities overcome psychological and socioeconomic obstacles that hurt
their academic success and their life chances. Serving as co-presidents of the organization, Joanne and Angela Park started this initiative following their move from Denver, Colorado, where they had attended a Title-1 school, to Fairfax County. After witnessing the challenges that students from poor communities can face, especially compared with students in better off locales, they wished to make a difference in alleviating the struggles for underserved students.
Through a multitude of programs within this organization, Level the Field empowers underserved students with encouragement, tutoring, and mentoring by peers and older students. Targeted towards low-income elementary school students, Level the Field’s ‘Reach for the Stars’ program is a free tutoring program that aims to explore the students interests in English, computer science or math.
Level the Field also utilizes social media in order to connect high school youth to college students (screened for their ability and interest in helping younger students) where the two can talk about challenges with schoolwork, stresses in relationships, the college application process, and/or self-esteem.
This organization has even had an international impact by expanding their contacts in Iraq, Canada and Mexico. In order to spread more awareness about issues relevant to young people in underserved communities, the organization organized a panel discussion with four academic experts who shared their insights about student success.
Joanne, Angela, and Abigail want to help students build resilience in an academic environment that often focuses primarily on external validation of success. In Joanne’s words, “We want students to feel intrinsic passion and worth.”
By placing an emphasis on STEM related topics through their published children’s books, the three attempt to introduce science concepts in an optimistic manner. Level the Field’s most recent published children’s book “Red-y, Set, DNA” tells the story of a red alpaca to introduce introductory science concepts to students who may lack confidence in STEM subjects. “Red-y, Set, DNA” reached Amazon’s #3 Best Sellers in the Science for Kids category within one week of publishing. Now, it has been listed as the #1 New Release in the same category.
All the proceeds and donations from Level the Field go towards Title-1 elementary schools throughout the United States. Joanne, Angela and Abigail think the STEM focus is especially important because they know that students from underserved communities can feel as if they are not able to succeed in school subjects or professions based on science and math. Joanne wishes to make STEM subjects “fun and interesting, not intimidating.”
