D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine awarded Warren King, an eighth-grader at Johnson Middle School with a Right Direction Award. The award and ceremony are a time to honor DC youth who are showing significant self-improvement, serving as role models to other youth, or otherwise effecting positive change in their communities.

Elementary school was a heartbreaking time for Warren as his father served a prison sentence and his mother battled cancer. Warren’s mother passed in 2015, which led to him transferring schools every time he bounced around to a new family member’s house.

Warren joined UPO’s P.O.W.E.R program after a sixth-grade year of academic struggles and disciplinary run-ins. Since then, he has become an honor roll student and tutors his classmates in Algebra!

UPO’s Providing Opportunities with Educational Readiness (P.O.W.E.R.) program is a six-year college readiness initiative. The program offers youth living in Ward 8 the opportunity to attend STEM-focused educational enrichment classes, learn life skills, and assistance preparing for and applying to college.

Learn more about Warren in the feature article written about him by the AFRO.