We were lucky to catch up with Jazmin Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jazmin , thanks for joining us today. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.
High Achievers Aim High’s (HAAH) mission is to combat the achievement gap and violence that plague the underrepresented youth in Cincinnati, and to help them move toward successful post-secondary lives. We achieve this mission through our annual Summer Academic Enrichment, Childcare Center, Anti-Bullying/Peer Mediation, Remote Learning Center and Tutoring programs. We also offer a number of other Youth Empowerment Programs, including our entrepreneurial internships program, HUSTLE Academy, Elementary S.T.E.M., Career/College Prep, and Mentoring. After 6 years of successful educational programming with families in Evanston and surrounding areas, The Team at HAAH is branching out and offering their educational empowerment programs to other communities with a large socioeconomically disadvantaged population of students. One of those target areas has been Colerain Township.
A 2016 report produced for the Community Council found a 73% drop in affordable housing in Over-The-Rhine between 2002 and 2015, alone, as a direct result of the renovations in Over-The-Rhine, and the relocation of its residents. According to the Community Building Institute for the City of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, “historic segregation and poverty patterns are changing as more Black households move into suburban locations on the west side of Cincinnati and the north and north central parts of Hamilton County.” Northwest Local School District’s student and school population has drastically changed over the past decade, and in particular Colerain Township. Since 2009, the number of teachers serving at Colerain Elementary, Middle, and High Schools have steadily declined. Since 2016, Colerain schools have been ranked in the bottom 50% of schools in Ohio (based on combined math and reading proficiency testing data) – GreatSchools. Prior to 2009, Colerain’s diversity score was consistently below the state average. However, since 2009, their diversity scores have been higher than the state average. At Houston Elementary, “minority enrollment is 51% of the student body (majority Black), which is higher than the Ohio state average of 30% (majority Black and Hispanic)” according to Public School Review.
Both the students and staff need assistance with the underrepresented students; a population that Colerain Township is not traditionally equipped with serving. That’s where we come in! Our certified staff has been providing child care, education, social and emotional intervention and enrichment services, to the underrepresented students in the Greater-Cincinnati area for 7 years now, and we want to extend our services to Colerain Township, by opening another HAAH community learning center in that area.
The HAAH Community Learning Center offers both in-house, and outsourced programming, specifically designed to meet the educational, physiological, psychology, safety, and social needs of the new student population in Colerain, with impoverished and oppressed backgrounds. Our facility is open to the community students who need a place for food, shelter, educational assistance, and social interaction, through structured programming and licensed professionals. Our educators and volunteers will also provide educational and social emotional programming support to the neighborhood schools in the Colerain area.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Founded in 2016, HAAH started as a volunteer tutoring program, serving 4th-6th graders at Rockdale Elementary, with hopes to prepare them for state testing. Since then, we have expanded our tutoring program, offering licensed teachers and volunteer scholars for all Pre-K through 12th students throughout each academic school year. In the summer of 2018, we hosted our first annual Summer Academic Enrichment Program. The HAAH SAEP is a 9-week program that provides educational intervention and social enrichment for children while they are on summer break. It is our goal to bridge the gap for any students who may have fallen behind during their previous school year. We aim high to help our High Achievers conquer their deficits in math and reading, so that they may enter their next grade feeling confident and fully prepared.
Our HAAH Summer Enrichment Program partners with many prestigious organizations including: Girl and Boy Scouts of America, Closing the Health Gap Do Right, College Girls of Cincinnati, The Ohio State University, FC Cincinnati, Phenom Basketball Association, Children’s Hospital, Abundance University, The Center for Social Emotional Learning, Whole Again, La Soupe, Aetna and many more.
In the fall of 2018, we started our partnership with Clark Montessori, implementing our Anti-Bullying/Peer Mediation program during their fall intersession. Community Service is a required intersession at Clark Montessori and must be taken during students’ 10th grade year, in order to graduate. During the intercession, students spend three days in an intensive Peer Mediation training conducted by HAAH. The remaining days are spent teaching younger Montessori Students the tenants of Peer Mediation as taught by HAAH. The goal of this intersession is to inspire and excite Montessori students to become Peer Mediators at their respective schools, in conjunction with HAAH, as well as become a Clark peer mediator in the Peer Mediation Club. We began the Peer Mediation Club in April 2019, and are continuing throughout the 2019-2020 school year. We are also preparing to conduct our second annual intersession with Clark this school year.
In May, 2019, we completed an Anti-Bullying/Peer Mediation Seminar with a group of high school girls at Dohn Academy. We have also recently met with the Student Achievement Board at Cincinnati Public Schools, and are preparing to begin our partnership for the 2020-2021 school year, so that we may offer our Anti-Bullying/Peer Mediation Program to all schools.
In February, 2019, we formed a partnership with the Academy of World Languages School to offer 4th-5th graders an after-school S.T.E.M. program. We completed a 10-week program where we worked on a number of Flight related projects with the student, until May. In February, 2020, we started an after-school Peer Mediation club with AWL as well.
In July, 2020, the world shut down and we had to pivot our program to cater to the current need of the community, so we opened our remote learning center to prevent a larger education gap for our students to come do their schoolwork at our facility and receive assistance. We also completed our first H.U.S.T.L.E. Academy, an entrepreneurship training and internship program that offered at-risk teens the opportunity to explore entrepreneurship as a post-secondary career option. HUSTLE Academy stands for Helping Lead Students Towards Leadership and Entrepreneurship, and is a collaborative effort between HAAH, MORTAR Cincinnati, and the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative’s (CYC) Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP). For 5 weeks, high schoolers were paired with black business throughout Cincinnati, where they completed a paid internship and actively learned the foundations of running a successful business. During those 5 weeks students also attended class where they learned Mortar curriculum training and jump-started their very own business plans.
In June 2021, we implemented our X-S.T.R.E.A.M. Sports program during CPS’s Summer Scholars program, through Activities Beyond the Classroom. This program has a physical curriculum and activities incorporating science, technology, reading, engineering, arts, mathematics, and sports through real-life application and experimentation. Multisports curriculum, with basketball, soccer, volleyball, and football sporting options. We serviced Fredrick Douglass, Kilgore, and Winton Hills Academy.
Since we have been blessed to expand our organization and move into a 10,000 square foot building where we now host our programs including our newly added Childcare Center accepting children as young as 6 weeks to make our center a one stop shop for parents who have younger youth. New programs to our organization also include our Youth Employment and Food Programs.
Because of our work with youth in Cincinnati we have been featured in The Cincinnati Herald, local news stations, including Fox 19 Now, Channel 5 Issues, and local Radio Stations (100.3, 101.1, 101.5)
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my cofounder and business partner Alexandra Cureton in the second grade and we have been best friends nearly all of our lives.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When we first got into the non-profit world, everyone would tell us to focus on one thing and partner up with other organizations instead of creating our own. This ended up being horrible advice. We are unique because we pivot to the needs of our community. The world changes every day and we want to be that organization that changes with it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.highachieversaimhigh.org
- Instagram: @highachieversaimhigh
- Facebook: High Achievers Aim High