Project Eye-to-Eye's Future

Since Project Eye-To-Eye's founding, Children and Adults with Attention Disorders (CHADD), The Leaning Disabilities Association (LDA), The International Dyslexia Association, USA Today and The New York Times have recognized The Project Eye-To-Eye mentoring model as one of the most innovative programming initiatives for LD/ADHD individuals in the country. Today, countless parents, university students, and communities around the country and the world have replicated Project Eye-To-Eye's innovative programming model.

However, few organizations in the country provide direct programming to children with learning differences and to the schools responsible for their education. Project Eye-To-Eye supports programming that works directly with LD/ADHD elementary school children by mobilizing the resources of LD/ADHD college students. In addition, the vast majority of organizations in the LD/ADHD field focus primarily on mobilizing parents. Project Eye-To-Eye, however, mobilizes young adults, bringing to the national conversation an often-unrepresented constituency. Lastly, the majority of disability not-for-profit organizations remain in the mindset of the medical model with their educational programs and outreach efforts focused on remediation. Project Eye-To-Eye programming is an asset based empowerment model. This model not only facilitates the experience of hope for labeled students but also empowers them with academic strategies and metacognitive and concrete advocacy skills. This asset based empowerment model not only fills a gap in the current service paradigms but also pushes the boundaries of the traditional deficit driven service model, challenging the underlying notion that labeled student are somehow less than normal, which is at the core of most programs for students with learning differences.

As Project Eye-To-Eye moves forward with its next five-year plan, we recognize that Project Eye-To-Eye has the potential to continue to play a groundbreaking role in creating a new paradigm for understanding LD/ADHD. We focus our energies on:

Chapter Expansion and Diversity

Enhanced Web Presence and Community Building

Expansion and Re-conceptualization of Speaking Board

Meaningful Parent Empowerment

Think Different Tank

Chapter Expansion and Mentor Recruitment Model

Within the next five years, Project Eye-To-Eye is committed to expanding its total number of sites from twenty-six to fifty chapters. This growth will be made possible by corporate and community support, increased commitment to secure endowments, and the creation of a personnel structure consisting of one program director and two program coordinators. Project Eye-To-Eye is also committed to expanding mentoring beyond academic settings into areas where there is a high concentrations of youth and young adults labeled with LD/ADHD. These areas may include juvenile correction faculties, substance abuse programs, and the military.

Project Eye-To-Eye's Chapter Expansion Model is grounded the in following four principles:

1. University and Student Capacity
   According to our internal research, the single most important variable in the success of an Eye-To-Eye chapter is not its locations, but the interest and commitment to the programming of the university or college chapter partner and the student coordinators. We have learned that when Project Eye-To-Eye drives the process of becoming a chapter at a university or college, we are less successful in building lasting programs.
   
   
2. Chapter Clustering
   In an effort to maximize our impact and conserve resources, Project Eye-To-Eye, when possible, builds programs that are nearby each other. This allows us to make a measurable difference in focused geographic location and to group together our site visits and training activities thus defraying costs.
   
   
3. Demographic Diversity
   Project Eye-To-Eye is committed to empowering students from all socioeconomic levels. To achieve this goal, Project Eye-To-Eye will seek to create socially, economically and geographically diverse chapters. All of the chapters in question are located within diverse socioeconomic settings from Harlem to rural Wisconsin.
   
   
4. Mentor Recruitment
   This recruitment model specifies the proper institutional procedures to market Project Eye-To-Eye to LD/ADHD college students. This model supports our chapter coordinators in differentiating the brand of our program on their college campuses and in clearly articulating the incentives of participating in Project Eye-To-Eye. This incentive system, beyond the value of public service, includes access to the Project Eye-To-Eye executive leadership, a vast alumni network, and opportunities for college course credit.

Enhanced Web Presence and Community Building

Project Eye-To-Eye is building a national LD/ADHD community by connecting all of its chapters, mentors, mentees and alumni through web-based networking to allow labeled youth and adults to develop a shared space dedicated to the LD/ADHD youth community and culture. Project Eye-To-Eye will also create an LD/ADHD online professional network association, led by Dan Thiebauld, a board member, graduate of Harvard's Graduate School of Business, and founder and president of Graduate Leverage, Inc. This web-based association will introduce LD/ADHD youth to LD/ADHD entrepreneurs, business professionals, and individuals in the creative/artistic fields as professional role models. Project Eye-To-Eye will increase its presence on the web so it can connect with the larger LD/ADHD community as well as expand its ability to raise funds.

Expansion and Re-conceptualization of Speakers Board

Project Eye-To-Eye continues to develop through media exposure the Mouth-To-Mouth Speakers Board as a force for social change for the larger LD/ADHD community. The Project Eye-To-Eye executive leadership gives more than 250 public presentations to over 15,000 educators, families and students annually. A priority of Project Eye-To-Eye is expanding the speakers' board by sending more Project Eye-To-Eye alumni across the country as LD/ADHD ambassadors. A percentage of their fees will be sent back to Project Eye-To-Eye to support our chapters

Meaningful Family Empowerment

Project Eye-To-Eye is equally committed to strengthening the empowerment of families connected to our chapters by developing an extensive community-based support and networking program directed to parents and family members. This program will give families a basis from which to better organize as a group, advocate for their children, and have a positive influence within their local community.

The Think Different Tank and a Call to Action

Project Eye-To-Eye is committed to develop an LD/ADHD Think Different Tank by partnering with like-minded academics and institutions to create a think tank that can establish a new research paradigm for the LD/ADHD community. The mission of this Think Different Tank will be to financially support research or offer limited residency for researchers, writers, and activists exploring different conceptual avenues to understand, work with, and improve the lives students with learning differences. The work produced in this Think Different Tank will be used to positively influence all levels of legislation, educational and professional polices, and the overall social standing of citizens labeled LD/ADHD.

Project Eye-To-Eye now represents a very large constituency that includes a large donor base. Utilizing the results of the Think Different Tank, we will seek to mobilize and the growing community of tens of thousands of people connected to Project Eye-To-Eye (mentors, mentees, alumni in the workplace, family members, educators, professionals) to influence educational policy, the improve the workplace environment, and to promote the inclusion of people with learning disabilities.

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