Raphael Zollinger, a New York working artist and faculty member of The Pratt Institute, is a sculptor by trade. He also knows LD/ADHD intimately having seen his brother go through school with a labeled learning disability. He reflects that this year's art curriculum was about Transformations and Appropriations: Changing School, Changing Self.

When speaking with Raphael, he described his belief that sculpture has the power to transform reality and to empower individuals to see the world differently. Building on that belief, Raphael created a series of sculptural projects designed to empower students to explore ideas of transformation and change. The first half of Raphael's curriculum focused on transforming common school objects or symbols, such as a lunch box or report card, empowering students to appropriate what are often painful symbols of school. "By appropriating these school objects, our students have the opportunity to explore their feelings towards the institution of education on their own terms," Raphael notes; "This process of appropriation and transformation ultimately allows students to begin the process of imagining and exploring a different educational experience for themselves."

Project Eye-To-Eye is the first Program in the nation to utilized high-end art projects designed by professional artists and we were honored to have Raphael as a part of this year's curriculum. Raphael left us with these words. "I look forward to staying involved in Project Eye-To-Eye in years to come and must say that while looking to create artwork that transforms school, I too was transformed by this wonderful program."

On June 1st, 2005, 18 year old Justin Andrews was awarded Project Eye-To-Eye’s first annual college scholarship. This scholarship provides a stipend to a student who has been mentored in Project Eye-To-Eye and is now college bound. The recipient of this scholarship must have shown both extraordinary academic achievement and a commitment to humanity and community service. Justin has achieved both of these criteria with a tremendous amount of humility. He maintained his place on honor role all 4 years of high school while simultaneously staying very active in his community both starting his own catering business as well as working at a local nursing home.

When first coming into the Project Eye-To-Eye program, in 1998, Justin reflects that, "school was not the easiest." However, having now had a mentor for over six years, Justin feels ready to take on the challenges of college and begin to give back. In fact, Justin delighted younger Project Eye-To-Eye mentees last mouth with a surprise visit to his old stomping grounds - the Project Eye-To-Eye Beyond Normal Art Club. Justin was kind enough to share his story with the younger student and answered questions of students who wanted to know what it was like when he was in their shoes.

Brown, Dartmouth, Vassar, New Jersey City University, University of Santa Barbara, East Strausberg University, The Churchill School, Bently College, The Delaware Valley Friends School, The Dalton School, Reed College, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

In 1998, David Hyman stepped into college life. However, unlike most college students, he found himself two days a week hanging out at a local elementary school working with a student named Michael, who like David was dyslexic and struggled with reading. Day in and day out David was committed to Michael and giving Michael a gift that only David had to give, hope. By the end of David's time at Brown, Michael had found hope and David had helped many other students find hope. David spent the last two years of his college career acting as a site coordinator for the Project Eye-To-Eye Brown University site.

Now eight years later, Project Eye-To-Eye wishes to honor Mr. Hyman for not only being an caring and profound mentor to Michael and leader at the Brown University site, but in continuing to act as a role model to us all by demonstrating that a label like dyslexia in no way limits a person's potential.

David Hyman, graduated from Brown University with honors and is now in the process of completed his third year at Cornell Medical School. Last summer, David set aside time to meet with several Project Eye-To-Eye mentors with aspiration of medical school. He explained to them how got to where he is and served as an inspiration them.

Thank you David Hyman for giving us all hope and inspiration.

When Project Eye-To-Eye was first founded a year ago, the decision to use a fiscal incubator was without question the best move to grow a program from infancy. The South Bay Center for Counseling gladly filled that role, becoming Project Eye-To-Eye strategic partner and fiscal agent. The South Bay Center for Counseling is a well-established non-profit organization that shares a common core mission with Project Eye-To-Eye: asset based community empowerment. Now, like any parent proudly sending their child off to college, the SBCC is providing the support needed for the Project Eye-To-Eye to become an autonomous non-profit. Within the next six to nine mouth, Project Eye-To-Eye, working with Landsman and Funk LLP, will incorporate as an autonomous non-profit.

The Staff and Advisory Board of Project Eye-To-Eye wishes to thank SBCC for its continued support.

Project Eye-To-Eye will hold its first Organizing Institute this summer, August 5-7. During this training being held just outside Manhattan at New Jersey City University, Project Eye-To-Eye coordinators will be flown in from around the nation to meet for three days. The OI, brings in speakers and renowned community activists to lead our twenty-two youth site coordinators through workshops, lectures and interactive programming on leadership skills, capacity building, asset-based community organizing, and LD/ADHD issues.

Project Eye-To-Eye staff would like to publicly thank one of our cite partners, New Jersey City University, for generously donating all conference room and dormitory space.

July 1st 2005, marks the culmination of year one of Project Eye-To-Eye speaking board, Mouth-To-Mouth: Breathing life into the public discourse on learning disabilities. This years speaking board was comprised of Jonathan Mooney, LeDerick Horne, David Flink, Maggie Chaney, David Singer, and Kathryn Singer. The members spoke in total at over 100 institutions or conferences reaching 20,000 teachers, parents and students. We celebrate the completion of a successful speaking season and are already looking forward to training new speakers at the Organizing Institute, further expanding the reach of our organization.

Rachel Barnard and Alek Davis will be moving to New York City in June to begin the second annual Project Eye-To-Eye Summer fellowship program. Rachel a native of Texas and Alek a native of California both were selected from a competitive applicant pool because they each individually showed a tremendous dedication to changing the face of learning disabilities in their communities.

Rachel, who was first labeled with a learning disability in elementary school, has spent her senior year completing an LD/ADHD research thesis project and increasing awareness about learning disabilities in her school community. Additionally, she has already begun making plans to start a Project Eye-To-Eye chapter at Mount Holyoke College, where she will matriculate as a freshman in September. Alek, was also labeled in elementary school, and ever since has been a voice for LD/ADHD students. He choose to study the concept of normalcy and learning disabilities last summer while assisting our Executive Director, Jonathan Mooney, during a portion of his travels on the Short Bus for Mr. Mooney's upcoming book release The Short Bus Stories.

This year's Project Eye-To-Eye's summer fellows will be doing research on art based empowerment models, social entrepreneurship, and LD/ADHD social constructions. The fellowship will culminate with their participation in the Project Eye-To-Eye Organizing Institute.

In January of 2004, not a dime existed in the Project Eye-To-Eye bank account. Big dreams lay ahead, but the money to make these dreams a reality still had not been secured. With the help of numerous supporters and the new acquisition of Pro Bono Development Officer, Linda Spencer, Project Eye-To-Eye managed to raised enough funds to fully fund year one and make provisions for year two. The money represents the generosity of 100's of individuals and a number of institutional grants. Additional, Project Eye-To-Eye's fee based college-mentoring program has growen into an important revenue stream.

We thank the generosity of all our supporters and enthusiastically look forward to the year to come.