ABOUT HCPP

Homelessness among families is rising in the District of Columbia at an alarming rate and faster than any other demographic. Washington DC leads the nation in two divergent categories: the highest rate of child poverty and the least affordable “state” in which to live. Housing prices soar, while one in three children lives in a low-income household. Each year 7,000 children and their families apply for emergency shelter in DC. Most are turned away because there is no room in the inn. In September 2009, there were 400 families on the waiting list for shelter.

Children in families who are granted emergency housing are admitted into a system that can compromise their mental and physical well-being, overlooks their needs, and even threatens their safety. Most family shelters have no programs or services for children despite the myriad of risk factors associated with homelessness. It is easy to overlook the needs of homeless children, but the opportunity for a healthy and happy childhood has a very real expiration date.

Mission: The mission of the Homeless Children's Playtime Project is to nurture healthy child development and reduce the effects of trauma among children living in temporary housing programs in the District of Columbia.

Vision: We believe that play is a human right that all children deserve, regardless of housing status. We seek to help create a city that provides every opportunity for homeless children to succeed by advocating for affordable housing and safe shelters for all families.

What We Do: Our trained and screened volunteers provide weekly activities, healthy snacks, and opportunities to play and learn for the children at emergency shelter and transitional housing sites in the District of Columbia. In the past five years, 200 volunteers have served more than 500 children at six playtime sites throughout the city.

How Did HCPP Start?

The Homeless Children’s Playtime Project (HCPP) began in 2003 by a coalition of concerned community members, led by social worker and child advocate, Jamila Larson and law clerk Regina Kline. After discovering there were twenty children living in the largest homeless shelter in the country located just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol building, they helped establish a playroom and begun providing weekly activities, snacks and supplies. In 2005 when families were moved from the CCNV shelter and sent to D.C. Village, HCPP followed the children there and the organization was granted 501(c)3 status. HCPP continued to survive as an all-volunteer organization and expanded to serve Hope Apartments and Turning Point Program.

When D.C. Village closed, HCPP moved to Northwest Church Family Network. In the fall of 2009, they hired their first regular staff, a fulltime Executive Director and part-time Program Associate and expanded to D.C. General Emergency Family Hypothermia Shelter and Park Road Emergency Family Shelter. The Playtime Project provides the only children’s program offered in five shelters a total of seven times each week where 75 volunteers serve more than 100 children in families who are homeless. Our program model provides one-on-one attention, healthy snacks and access to developmentally appropriate toys and activities designed to reduce the traumatic effects of homelessness and shelter living on children from infants to age twelve to promote learning and joy.

Take Me to Your Leaders!

HCPP has always been a largely volunteer-run organization managed by an Executive Director and a Program Associate along with a team of Site Coordinators who oversee each site. You can read about all of these creatures along with our governing Board of Directors below!

Jamila Larson, LICSW
Executive Director, Co-Founder
jamila.hcpp(at)gmail.com

Lana Tilley
Program Associate
lana.hcpp(at)gmail.com

The HCPP Site Coordinators

D.C. General

Lana Tilley is originally from Berkeley, California and began volunteering with Playtime in 2007 while working for a homelessness policy non-profit. Now the Program Associate in the HCPP office, she looks forward to evenings filled with imaginative adventures at Turning Point and DC General. "The consistency that playtime creates for children and their parents is so valuable. The trust that develops between volunteers and families is a result of the visible happiness each child gains from playtime each evening, and feels really special!"

Michelle Smith is originally from Washington, DC but also considers North Carolina her home and she is a Kent State University grad. Her passion for working with children and being a consistent presence in their lives brought her to HCPP in 2009. She is a Program Supervisor for Everybody Wins! DC, a children's literacy and mentoring organization in the DC Public Schools. In her spare time, Michelle organizes a volunteer group, Washington's Biggest Givers. “Being new to Playtime, I’m really excited to provide a quality, fun, exciting program at DC General where imaginations soar!”

Park Road

Haley Adams is from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and has a Masters degree in public policy from American University. She became involved in HCPP in 2007 because she felt upset seeing homeless people on the street and wanted to do something about it. “I think kids are the best place to start!” One day, she saw a 6-year-old crying, saying classmates had teased him about his ugly and dirty shoes. A 10-year-old girl at the shelter was consoling him, telling him it doesn’t matter what other people say, just what his family thinks and that everyone here at the program cares about him. “The next thing you know, he was off playing with a big smile on his face!”

Stephanie Sprow is from Buffalo, New York and has been involved with HCPP since 2009 after graduating from the University of Michigan and coming to Washington to work for the Children’s Defense Fund. She wanted to volunteer with younger children as she did at a Detroit Head Start Program and says HCPP has helped her realize how important play is for children. “I have watched so many of the children at my site grow up and reach developmental milestones (learning to walk and talk, learning to share, and listening to rules and recognizing the consequences if they are broken). The children never want to leave the same volunteers every week!”

NCFN

Kathleen Fawcett is originally from Hagerstown, Maryland and she became involved with HCPP in 2008 after a shooting in her neighborhood near NCFN inspired her to get involved in her neighborhood. Despite her busy schedule as a third year law student at Catholic University and working as a law clerk, Kathleen often organizes special events like holiday parties for Playtime. “I get ten times out of playtime than what I put in. It is the best part of my week!”

Ashley Carter is from Queens, New York and she is a Communications Coordinator for a national organization. She has a degree in Foreign Language Media from American University and started volunteering with HCPP in 2008. “The children have taught me to be patient and get at the underlying issue at hand…I love working with the most challenging children because you can draw out the genius in each one.”

Katie Bergfeld comes from St. Louis, Missouri and has a Masters degree in International Affairs from American University. She works as a Senior Research Analyst at a consulting firm and has been involved with HCPP since 2009. “I live near NCFN so it’s a great way for me to give back to my community. I often see the children walking in the neighborhood with their parents. I see one child nearly every day waiting for the bus with his mother. Everytime I see him, he squeals, jumps up and down and waves.”

Meg Newman is originally from Boston, Massachusetts where play services for homeless children reign. She has been involved with HCPP since 2004 at the first playtime site in the CCNV shelter. She aided with the transition to DC Village and then served as Program Coordinator where she led HCPP’s expansion to Turning Point, DC General and NCFN. Meg is a student at Georgetown Law School and thrilled to return to playtime after a year sabbatical while she coordinated DC's free tax assistance coalition while attending law school at night. "Playtime has been a constant source of joy and inspiration. It grounds me and allows me to soar to the outer limits of my imagination!"

Turning Point

Lana Tilley is originally from Berkeley, California and began volunteering with Playtime in 2007 while working for a homelessness policy non-profit. Now the Program Associate in the HCPP office, she looks forward to evenings filled with imaginative adventures at Turning Point and DC General. "The consistency that playtime creates for children and their parents is so valuable. The trust that develops between volunteers and families is a result of the visible happiness each child gains from playtime each evening, and feels really special!"

Anna Fogel hails from New York City and she began volunteering with Playtime in 2009 because she longed to be involved in the community to balance out her day job in international development consulting in microfinance, housing and small business finance. Anna loves helping to build the vocabularies of the children we serve by introducing new foods at snack time. “Most of the kids had never heard of cantaloupe and by the end of snack, they were all asking for it by name (part of the activity was just learning how to pronounce it!) The next week one of the kids came in and asked me if we were having cantaloupe for snack because it was one of his favorite fruits!”

Frances Patton is from Evanston, Illinois and has a degree from Mary Washington University. She works as Special Events Coordinator at the Newseum. She joined HCPP in 2009 because she wanted to give back to the community and she loves kids. “It was the perfect fit! I may walk into Playtime with work on my mind and the second I walk in the door, a child runs up to me and we start playing and I am reminded why I am here!”

Community of Hope

Emily Barrows comes to us from Springfield, Massachusetts and since 2008 has come all the way from Gaithersburg, MD every Saturday to come to Hope Apartments. She has a degree in elementary education and is known for her patience with children and making them feel they are the most important person in the world when she gives them her attention. “The fact that the children are waiting at the door for us most Saturdays shows how much they enjoy the program and how important it is for us to be there consistently.”

Julie Gallagher, originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio, is a graduate of the University of Rochester with a double major in history and political science. She first became involved with HCPP when she moved to DC in 2005 and she helped start our site at Hope Apartments by commuting by bus across town every Saturday morning for years even if she was the only volunteer. Julie is a teaching fellow at KIPP DC: KEY Academy in southeast Washington where she teaches fifth grade choir.

HCPP Leadership Alums: A special shout-out to former Site Leaders Kate Chambers, Nicole French, Katie Vinopal, and Angela Kim who have helped develop and sustain HCPP from the beginning. Our organization would not be what it is now without you and we wish you well on your sabbatical from HCPP as you study hard in graduate school!

The HCPP Board of Directors

Jamila Larson, LICSW
Executive Director, Co-Founder
Member of the Board of Directors
jamila.hcpp(at)gmail.com

Jamila has been running the Playtime Project as a volunteer since its founding in 2003 and assumed the role as first fulltime Executive Director in September 2009. For the previous five years she served as the Community School Director for the National Center for Children at the J.C. Nalle Elementary School in southeast Washington, DC. In 2005 she was awarded “Employee of the Year” as a “Voice for Children” by the 90-year-old agency of 180 staff members providing comprehensive child welfare services in the Washington metropolitan area. While a college student in Minnesota, she founded a program similar to HCPP at a Minneapolis homeless shelter which earned her the “Social Work Student of the Year” award in 1995 and continues now in its fifteenth year. Jamila came to Washington to work for the Children’s Defense Fund where she researched and wrote about best practices for strengthening low-income families before going back to school for her Master’s degree in Social Work. She then served as a Clinical Social Worker at Bright Beginnings, a Head Start program for homeless families, and then as Regional Director for National Student Partnerships (now LIFT).

Regina Kline
Co-Founder, HCPP
Vice President of the Board of Directors
gkvfg(at)yahoo.com

Gina graduated from the University of Maryland law school in 2008 and currently serves as a law clerk for a judge in Washington, DC. She received a degree in Political Science in 2002 from Columbia University and was a member of the founding group of students who organized and built the nation’s only student-run nonprofit serving the needs of low-income individuals, National Student Partnerships. Gina served as Site Coordinator for the NSP-DC office as an Americorps*VISTA volunteer where she helped low-income and homeless individuals find housing, jobs connect with critical social services. Gina then went on to work for the Appleseed Foundation and the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless where she advocated for families whose rights were being violated because of their homeless status.

Patty Mullahy-Fugere, Esq.
Executive Director of Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless
Member of the HCPP Board of Directors
patty(at)legalclinic.org

Patty has been involved in low-income housing and homelessness issues in the District of Columbia since 1980. She is one of the co-founders, and presently is the executive director, of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, which advocates on behalf of people struggling with homelessness and poverty in the nation’s capital. Ms. Mullahy-Fugere was recently appointed by the DC Court of Appeals to the newly-formed Access to Justice Commission. She serves on the steering committee of the Fair Budget Coalition, and on the Board of Directors of the Washington Council of Lawyers in addition to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project. She is actively involved in the D.C. Consortium of Legal Services Providers. Previously, she served on the D.C. Bar’s Public Service Activities Committee, the D.C. Bar’s Pro Bono Initiative Working Group, the management committee of the Campaign for New Community, as well as on the boards of directors of Calvary Women's Shelter, the Coalition for Financial Accountability, and the Legal Resource Center for Non-Profit Housing Sponsors. She is an adjunct faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she teaches a course titled “Homelessness and Legal Advocacy".

Kirsten Lodal
CEO and Co-Founder of LIFT (formerly National Student Partnerships)
Member of the HCPP Board of Directors
klodal(at)liftcommunities.org

Kirsten Lodal co-founded National Student Partnerships in 1998 as a sophomore at Yale University and has devoted the last ten years to guiding the development and expansion of NSP's innovative program model. Since its founding, NSP has graduated more than 3,000 student volunteer advocates who have collectively served over 20,000 low-income families. At present, the organization operates student-driven resource centers in 12 communities nationwide. Lodal is also committed to strengthening the non-profit sector as a whole and actively serves on several Boards, coaches leaders of emerging social ventures, and participates in numerous policy working groups; in 2006, she served as a delegate to the first ever Non-Profit Congress. Along with NSP Co-Founder Brian Kreiter, Kirsten was the 2004 recipient of the Jefferson Award for Public Service, recognized with the Samuel S. Beard Award for Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 or Under. Lodal was recently named by the Washingtonian magazine as one of Washington’s “40 Under 40” and in the May 2007 “Power” edition of Washington Life magazine as “What’s Next in DC.” She holds an executive management certificate from Columbia Business School's Institute for Not-for-Profit Management.

Bob Edwards
Host, The Bob Edwards Show on XM Satellite Radio
Member of the HCPP Board of Directors
Bob.Edwards(at)xmradio.com

In a career that has lasted more than 30 years, Bob Edwards has interviewed nearly 20,000 newsmakers. Born May 15, 1947 in Louisville, Kentucky, Edwards spent the early part of his career as a newscaster for Indiana station WHEL/New Albany, followed by a stint in Korea with Armed Forces Radio and Television. Edwards was working for WTOP/Washington when he joined National Public Radio in 1974. Later that year, Edwards was asked to join Susan Stamberg as co-host of a new NPR news program, All Things Considered.

In 1979, NPR launched Morning Edition, a morning companion show in the style of All Things Considered. Edwards was asked to host the show for the first 30 days until a permanent replacement could be found. In fact, Edwards served as the host for nearly 25 years. During his tenure on Morning Edition, Edwards won two Gabriel Awards from the National Catholic Association of Broadcasters, in addition to the Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Award in 1995 and a Peabody Award in 1999. Edwards stepped down as host of Morning Edition on April 30, 2004. Later that year, Edwards moved to XM Satellite Radio to launch The Bob Edwards Show. Bob Edwards was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2004. He has volunteered his time to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project which he introduced to the country in 2008 through his award winning radio documentary: The Invisible: Children Without Homes that won the Alfred R. Murrow Award for Best Radio Documentary.