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Community Corner

Upper Marlboro Resident Launches Countywide Nonprofit

Tonia Wellons has launched the Prince George's County Social Innovation Fund.

Imagine a privately run children’s aftercare, whose supervisors actively participate in public school education.

That is part of Tonia Wellons’ vision for the emerging Prince George’s County Social Innovation Fund, a nonprofit which aims to form cohesion between different people, institutions and ideas.

An Upper Marlboro resident, Wellons started the nonprofit in November as a means of improving the quality of life in Prince George’s County. Wellons said her goal is for the PGC-SIF to create social and educational opportunities through existing frameworks, not by adding to the county’s infrastructure.

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More than 60 percent of children from kindergarten to sixth grade spend longer than four hours in aftercare every day after school, according to Wellons. “What if we were to align the curricula of private aftercare programs with public education?” Wellons said. “It’s one of the most impactful ways that we can improve student performance in the immediate term.”

Wellons added that the PGC-SIF will follow the model of groups like Ashoka, which works to bolster and streamline social and economic participation in communities across the world. Yet the PGC-SIF will act on a local, not global, scale.

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“Despite all of the challenges that Prince George’s has – the crime statistics, the housing and foreclosure statistics – it’s full of people who are incredibly talented, who are making great strides professionally, personally and in their civic contributions,” Wellons said. “What is missing, however, is a solid, concrete opportunity for people to contribute in meaningful ways.”

This absence of opportunity, in part, is associated with Prince George’s County’s identity as a place for homes, not jobs, according to Wellons. Sixty percent of Prince George’s County residents commute out of the county to get to their jobs.

According to Wellons, the PGC-SIF has already moved past the first phase of its development. Its concept – a catalyst of creating social capital to improve life in Prince George’s County – and its identity as a nonprofit, have both solidified.

Now, Wellons is looking to fill the PGC-SIF’s advisory board in order to formulate the fund’s business and fundraising plans.

“It’s a launch-and-learn organization, so we won’t wait until we have everything perfectly aligned,” Wellons said. “We expect that by the beginning of next year, we will be fully operational.” 

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