Celebrate RVA founder and Executive Director Julia Warren
In March, Celebrate RVA was set to celebrate in a big way as it unveiled its new 4,500-square-foot facility in on the ground floor of The Oliver apartments in Richmond’s East End, a space designed to host free birthday parties for kids from all over Richmond.
The new space, which was donated to the organization by building developers Spy Rock Real Estate Group and Crescent Developers, was to be a game-changer for the nonprofit, allowing it to move out of a 200-square-foot storage room and establish a real headquarters, hosting birthday parties on site and offering new programs for kids to, as its website states, “help transform our community through the power of joy.”
Instead, Celebrate RVA was forced to shut its doors this spring as coronavirus restrictions put a halt to all in-person gatherings but quickly found a new way to continue providing birthday parties to kids in need, delivering birthday bags full of decorations, plates, napkins and cake mix — everything needed to celebrate safely at home.
Now, months later, Celebrate RVA is ready to take on the “transform our community” part of its mission by converting its new space into the Celebrate Virtual Learning Environment to support Richmond Public Schools students who live in The Oliver as they return to school online, offering a safe space to learn along with emotional support.
Part of Celebrate RVA’s virtual learning space at The Oliver
Celebrate RVA Executive Director Julia Warren came up with the idea after talking to families who live at The Oliver, an income-restricted apartment complex on Oliver Hill Way that opened late last year. Parents, especially those in single-parent households, were worried about how they would manage after RPS made the announcement that it would be conducting the first semester of the 2020-21 school year virtually.
“Parents were having to choose between being present for their children and supervising school and providing for them financially and [going] to work,” Warren says. “We have 4,500 square feet that we are not going to be using. Why can’t we open it to provide a safe space for kids to learn and continue the mission of bringing joy to their lives?”
Warren sent a survey to the building’s residents, asking parents how Celebrate RVA could step in to help, and within a week decided to offer the space and staff to support virtual learning.
“Making that pivot was a no-brainer,” she says. “We saw this need in the community, and I knew we could meet it.”
The facility can accommodate 15 elementary and middle school students and will be open to residents of The Oliver first.
“Our biggest priority is getting all of the children who live in the building into the center for learning,” Warren says. “If we still have room and have the funding to open it up [further], we will work with partner agencies who might have children who live close by and who need that resource.”
Celebrate RVA is working with Grady Hart, head of the RPS office of community engagement, and is raising $30,000 to support the initiative. They are hiring a full-time student success coordinator to oversee students’ virtual learning and act as a liaison among teachers, students and parents. They are also recruiting volunteers to help. “We aren’t teaching the kids, we are simply supporting their learning,” Warren says. “Working with RPS is going to be critical.”
Stringent cleaning procedures will be in place, and rooms have been divided into individual distance-learning stations.
“We have tried to think through every single thing we will need,” Warren says. “We’re going to go on this, and within the first week things will look different. We will learn what does and doesn’t work. The biggest thing is we are asking for grace and a whole lot of patience as the entire community tries to figure out what [virtual learning] looks like.”
Celebrate RVA’s space at The Oliver was donated to the organization by building developers Spy Rock Real Estate Group and Crescent Developers.
Warren founded Celebrate RVA in 2013 after volunteering as a tutor at Oak Grove-Bellemeade Elementary with her grandfather, Bob Argabright. A 16-year-old high school junior at the time, Warren met children who had never celebrated their birthdays — some didn’t even know when they were born. She made it her mission to make sure every kid in Richmond had the chance to blow out a birthday candle and be told their lives mattered. “They weren’t having the opportunity to celebrate,” she says.
Since then, Celebrate RVA has hosted parties for about 1,000 children each year, working with two dozen partner agencies to connect with kids who need to be celebrated. Some are parties for individuals, held in homeless shelters or the pediatric oncology ward at VCU Health. Others are group parties in area schools.
Though in-person birthday parties remain on hold for a while, Warren says the organization will still focus on celebrating while supporting virtual education.
“How can we celebrate the little moments?” she asks. “It’s OK for every day not to be a confetti-colored rainbow. We want kids to know it’s OK to feel a lot of emotions, especially now.
“If you asked me last year at this time, I would have never imagined we would be here. Every member of our community is being affected by [the pandemic]. We have to respond to what the community needs most. Right now that is assisting with their academics and celebrating with them in other ways and finding new ways to serve our community.”
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