On this day in 2016...

Today is the 3rd anniversary of our first TeenSHARP Delaware opening ceremony.

The decision to expand TeenSHARP to Delaware was driven by our understanding of the need and our belief that TeenSHARP could help meet that need.

But other than that...most would have considered it a terrible time to launch a second program site.

Our largest donation at the time was ~$1,000 and we were running our NJ site on a lot of love, pro bono volunteering, and crowdfunding.

We had no full-time staff and were still the lead teachers for most of the high school classes in NJ.

It was unclear how we were going to split ourselves across the two sites on Saturdays and recruit all the necessary staff with our limited resources.

I forgot to mention that we were figuring out life with a newborn at the same time we were embarking on this expansion.

Common sense would suggest we wait but with our generous mix of crazy, commitment, and faith we decided to persist.

We were met with a lot of closed doors but then there was daylight. One of our 30-minute coffee meetings with a prospective funder turned into a $20,000 grant to start TeenSHARP Delaware.

That was good enough of a sign for us that this whole thing was going to happen and happen it did.

In just a few years, under Tatiana Poladko's leadership we've gone from a home office to a real TeenSHARP HQ office; from no full-time staff to several; from no grants Tatiana and team raising well over a million dollars to support TeenSHARP's work.

All of this means we are able to work alongside more families and students on their journey to highly-competitive colleges and career opportunities.

This is a privilege and a blessing.

Please know that we're deeply grateful for the many people whose time, talents, wisdom, generosity, belief, and well-wishes fuel this endeavor.