A Note from Leadership
2020 was a year like no other. A deadly hundred-year pandemic transformed all our lives. School buildings closed abruptly, isolating our poet-athletes from their teammates and coaches. George Floyd’s murder set off global protests for police reform and racial justice -- thrusting into the forefront of global public discourse topics about which, for decades, our students have written and performed poems.
A year like 2020 validates why safe and brave spaces for young people of color are needed. This is why America SCORES exists: to provide spaces where young people of color belong. To provide opportunities for young people to make sense of the world around them, to raise their voices, to discover their agency, to strengthen their physical and mental health, and, most importantly, to always always know that they matter.
Keeping poet-athletes safe, supported, and connected has been our north star through these trying times. This Annual Report provides a glimpse into the lengths our coaches and affiliate staff went to do so. It also shares a few of the many ways we continued to uplift and celebrate poet-athletes in 2020, including the launch of Poets for Good in Boston and our first-ever competitive National Youth Poetry Slam, which was memorialized in a feature-length documentary.
2020 challenged and changed us all. As we look ahead to a brighter, more equitable future, we reflect on the words of 6th grade New York poet-athlete Karla*:
Corwin Thomas, Board Chair & Bethany Rubin Henderson, Network President
The SCORES Program
America SCORES was founded in 1994 in Washington, D.C. by a public school teacher concerned that her elementary school students, lacking constructive after-school options, were at risk of gang activity and other dangers after class. As she introduced new activities - soccer, poetry, and service learning - to her students, she found that they became more engaged in class, more physically active, and more involved in their communities. Designed as a replicable model, SCORES has grown since becoming a national organization in 1999 to impact over 130,000 students across the United States and Canada.
FY20 was our most unique year yet, as we all confronted the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism head-on. When COVID-19 closed school buildings in all of our 11 cities -- Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Milawukee, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Vancouver, and Washington D.C. -- America SCORES stayed open. Our focus: helping poet-athletes feel safe, supported, and connected. Our free virtual programming centered on keeping our youth teams engaged with each other and on providing safe and brave spaces for poet-athletes to process the trauma swirling around them. Our coaches used a variety of means to stay connected to poet-athletes, including live videoconferences, social media, phone calls home, printed packets distributed at meal sites, SCORES at-home poet-athlete kits, and more. Although the virtual programming didn't look like SCORES, for many thousands of poet-athletes, it still felt like SCORES.