Wow, this school year has been a whirlwind. I can hardly believe it is over. On Saturday, June 9th we celebrated our 3rd annual Year End Celebration. We recognized the many accomplishments of our students and our over 212 volunteers who participated with Casa Chirilagua in the last year.

We are moving along in the interview process to hire two new staff members. We hope to announce our two new additions to the team in the next newsletter. Please continue to pray for this process.

We have a slight change in programming to announce for the summer. We lost our space for the Kids Club Summer Program so it will look a little bit different this year. We will not have our day-to-day group programming; however, all is not lost.  We will still keep our students very busy this summer. Our families have been offered the opportunity to enroll their children in another daytime summer program partnering with the City of Alexandria’s Summer Rec Program.

Kids Club will still be offering our Friday “Experience and Exposure” trips to stay connected with the entire group once per week. The Casa Chirilagua summer interns will be visiting all of our students two times per week at their homes, the babysitter, or at the summer rec program to offer one hour sessions of one-to-one reading support and interventions. In addition to this, through multiple partnerships Casa Chirilagua students will be offered the opportunity to participate in a number of day programs and sleep away camps including the following:

• • FCA soccer camp (5th grade boys) the last week of June
  • APC VBS (1st-3rd graders) the first week of July
  • Camp Bennett (4th/5th grade students) the first week of July
  • Young Life Wyldlife Camp (Middle School students) the first week of July
  • LIT Trip to IL (LIT students) the first week of August

Though the summer program will not look the same this year, we believe our students will still have a great summer filled with many learning opportunities.  As a staff, we hope to use a little bit of our downtime from morning programs to on-board our new staff members, spend a lot of time visiting families in the neighborhood and prepare for a phenomenal 2012-2013 school year.

Wishing you a wonderful summer,

Dawnielle