Pin Points, Inc. - YOUTHDEVELOPMENT

Youth Program: Since 1980, Pin Points has created community plays with young people from some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in southeast DC and turned them into professional productions that have toured 37 states and 9 countries, giving our youth life-changing exposure to a diversity of information, people, places, and experiences. Through the process of theater, youth are taught an endless range of subjects, from theater to social skills to computer literacy – as they become what they explore.

Youth learn that acting is the act of communicating a message that causes someone to act, react, and/or take action. Young participants plan, organize, discuss, create, and run productions that address their issues; taking ownership of "Mind, Body, and Service" encourages them to take ownership of their choices in life.

Population Served:
Youth and young adults, 13-24 years old.

The Process:

Recruits and retains youth with stipends for participation, pay for performances, jobs & job-readiness training with a DOES instructor, awards, field trips, speakers, mentoring, fitness training or games, and daily doses of fun activities.
Uses theater to teach youth information essential to their success in all aspects of their lives.
Trains youth in the performing arts.
Exposes youth to life-changing experiences including Broadway plays, internships with major corporations, national tours, and motivating speakers & mentors from all walks of life.
Offers computer literacy or IT certification through our partner: Practical Productivity and Technologies.
Offers employment, internships and nat'l tours, during the program and long after youth leave the program.
Sends youth to an intense two-week college prep summer camp in Stamford, Connecticut where 91 percent of its participants enter college.

The above is accomplished with a format of theater, learning on the move, role-playing, long-term mentoring, and training in the performing arts. "Learning on the move" is especially effective because some students find classroom learning difficult, but all students learn through movement. See the research on our website: (Learning & Movement)

Mind, Body, and Service Mantra

You have two ends with a common link.
With one you sit. With one you think.
Success depends on which you use.
Heads, you win. Tails, you lose.

NOTE: PIN POINTS THEATRE’s after-school program follows the structure of the plan for Positive Youth Development plan put in place by the National Training Institute for Community Youth Work Academy for Educational Development, Wanda E. Fleming and Elaine Johnson, October 1996/Also, the Improving After-School Program Quality, by the William T. Grant Foundation, April 2007.