EducationWorks traces its origin to the National and Community Service Act of 1990, legislation signed into law by President George H. W. Bush that laid the groundwork for AmeriCorps and ushered in the current era of federal support for community service.

A group in New Jersey (including the founders of EducationWorks) successfully competed for funding to create a state-run model program of national service, which was named the Urban Schools Service Corps. A grant in 1992 allowed them to engage more than 120 citizens—teachers, school administrators, students, parents, community leaders—in a six month planning process and then implement the program in the twelve most impoverished cities in the state.

In 1994 we moved out of state government to the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, renamed the program the National School and Community Corps, took it to Philadelphia, and became a charter AmeriCorps program.

Over the next seven years the program grew significantly, to the point that by 2001 we decided to “spin-off” from Woodrow Wilson to create an independent nonprofit, to continue to operate the National School and Community Corps and also develop new programs. We named our new organization EducationWorks and began a year-long transition that was completed when EducationWorks (EW) became fully operational on September 1, 2002.

From our start in 1992, EW has provided effective, comprehensive educational and developmental support to more than 190,000 disadvantaged children, youth, and adults. We still provide the initial program designed by our planning group, teams of AmeriCorps members assigned to single schools for the whole school year. Today we also provide programs for pre-schoolers, dropouts and unemployed adults, and have specific programs in technology, violence reduction, work readiness, and much more, about which you can read elsewhere on this web site.

Today EW is the largest AmeriCorps program in Pennsylvania, with more than 400 members each year, and the biggest provider of school-based out of school time programs in Philadelphia.