Nonprofit profile: Give Chances Inc., helping low-income students with educational opportunities

In brief

Location: Two in-person centers in New Jersey (Parsippany and Palisades Park) and one in-person center in New York (Oakland Gardens); most of the participants of the online program reside in New Jersey.
Areas we serve: New Jersey and New York
Leadership: Dr. Anna Lee plans, leads and manages all our main programs as executive director.

Origin

Give Chances Inc. is a nonprofit organization founded and registered in the state of New Jersey in 2011. It was founded by Kevin Lee, an entrepreneur with several businesses such as PNPLINE, Codiz Soft and iOttie based in New Jersey. He founded Give Chances to give back to his community.

Goals

In a long term, we plan to expand to have nationwide in-person learning centers, a least one in every state, by 2030.

Programs

Joyful Learning After School Program: After-school program for K-8th grade where we provide homework assistance and extracurricular activities from 4-6 p.m. Monday to Friday. We aim to overcome the learning gap by providing free, or affordable, one-on-one educational support. 

DDartists Disability Support Program: Educational program for people with developmental disabilities (DDartists) where we provide art classes and design products with arts created by DDartists to help them become more economically self-reliant. The program is free and meets once a week. Each day is broken down into two key units, which consist of talent development and job training. 

Dream & Hope Community Support Program: The goal of this program is to financially guide and assist our community as much as possible through various types of donations and scholarships available. For example, we have provided rent subsidization, food donation and scholarship funds as part of the Dream & Hope program.

Achievements

• Served around 100 students from low-income households with 200 volunteers, suggesting that each student was successfully matched with a specific volunteer. 
• Received $50,000 through our annual charity concert event this year.
• Hosted a DDartists (artists with developmental disabilities) annual art exhibition, with five artists participating this year.

Achievements

• Served around 100 students from low-income households with 200 volunteers, suggesting that each student was successfully matched with a specific volunteer. 
• Received $50,000 through our annual charity concert event this year.
• Hosted a DDartists (artists with developmental disabilities) annual art exhibition, with five artists participating this year.

Benefactors

Here is the complete list of our benefactors. We are grateful to be receiving such generous support from many foundations, businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

• iOttie/PNPLINE/Codizsoft/ Duogreen (founder’s businesses)
• New Jersey Office of Faith Based Initiatives
• Global Children Foundation
• Robert & Joan Dircks Foundation
• NY Nanum Foundation
• Korean American Community Foundation
• Overseas Koreans Foundation
• Bergen Volunteers
• Camp Naru (free summer camp program for students from low-income households)
• R2Gate (donated funds for afterschool program)
• Carson Dellosa (donated books for afterschool program)
• bb.q Chicken (donated funds)
• Bank of Hope (donated funds)
• New Millennium bank (donated funds)

Conversation Starter

For more information, please contact Yujung Jung, program manager at yujung.ju@givechances.org, go to: givechances.org or call 201-266-0640.