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Marjorie Young:
Community House is an organization that was founded back in 1969, and it was founded by

Marjorie Young:
a group of students who were very interested in making a difference in the local community.

Marjorie Young:
So -- if you can imagine a group of Princeton students back in '69 going into the community

Marjorie Young:
and actually living there and establishing relationships with parents and grandparents

Marjorie Young:
and children and actually going into the school system and meeting people -- so, it was really sort of

Marjorie Young:
a very nice sort of grassroots situation where people really made real connections with the

Marjorie Young:
people they worked with.

Marjorie Young:
So, that's something that Community House has retained. We are still very much in the

Marjorie Young:
community. We work with the local schools. We work with churches. We work with summer camp

Marjorie Young:
programs. So, we continue to have great relationships with the community partners, as well as the parents.

Marjorie Young:
But since '69 a lot of things have changed. So, in the beginning the students provided

Marjorie Young:
just basic tutoring help and some recreational activities. Now, we have a whole range of programs,

Marjorie Young:
ranging from our sustainability summer camp, we have science programs, we have engineering

Marjorie Young:
programs where kids are using Legos and building and thinking about the different aspects of engineering.

Marjorie Young:
People ask me the question, "How does Community House impact undergraduate students?" I've

Marjorie Young:
had a lot of students who started out in one career path, and then end up with Teach for

Marjorie Young:
America or our program here, the Program in Teacher Preparation, so all of a sudden you

Marjorie Young:
see this curve, because they're like, "Wow, this really matters to me, and I want to do

Marjorie Young:
something to make a difference."

Marjorie Young:
We have a Generation One Program, which is a high school program. This program started

Marjorie Young:
in 2000, and we have students who have graduated from the Gen One Program, and they're

Marjorie Young:
now in college. Now, I'm always cautious about saying that Community House is the reason,

Marjorie Young:
but we know that we have impacted them in their desire to go to school, either because

Marjorie Young:
we provided an SAT prep class or because we took them on college tours.

Marjorie Young:
We really are striving to impact the minority achievement gap in a very tangible way. It's

Marjorie Young:
the issue where minority students tend not to do as well in school as the majority population.

Marjorie Young:
And so at Community House, we really focus ourselves on thinking about what are the issues involved

Marjorie Young:
with this problem, how can we utilize Princeton resources, how can we utilize undergraduate

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students, alumni, community partners? How we can leverage all the resources to make

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a big difference and make a change in this problem?

Marjorie Young:
The minority achievement gap isn't going to be changed overnight, but it certainly will

Marjorie Young:
be changed one student at a time and that's our mission at Community House, is to make

Marjorie Young:
a difference one student at a time.