How We Started

Founded in 1964 and expanding nationally since 1995, Horizons National is a network of high-quality, tuition-free, immersive academic and enrichment programs for children who experience inequities in their education, providing out-of-school-time supports for the duration of a child’s K-12th grade experience. With 71 Horizons programs across 20 states, and growing each year, Horizons is unique among summer programs because:

1. We make a long-term investment in our students;
2. We partner with students’ families; and
3. We support both academic achievement and healthy youth development.

Over the past few decades, we’ve seen that Horizons’ repeated positive interventions and affirming reinforcements over multiple years are highly effective in closing the well-documented gaps in opportunity for students experiencing educational inequity.

In 2018, with the help of HSBC, Horizons National launched two pilot program sites in Chicago in partnership with the University of Chicago Charter Schools (UCCS). The first two programs, Horizons National Chicago - Donoghue and Horizons National Chicago - North Kenwood/Oakland served 60 students in summer 2018, drawing students from their host charter schools. Both programs were hosted on the same campus in their first summer, allowing for powerful collaboration among Site Directors and teachers, shared interns and enrichment teachers, and shared transportation costs for swimming and field trips. The UCCS programs hosted 4 interns from a collaborative UCCS/University of Chicago Lab School internship program, where high school students from both schools are placed together in pairs to work at non-profits across the South Side. 

In Summer 2019, Horizons National Chicago served 110 students in Pre-K through second grade. Both programs were again hosted on the same campus, providing students the opportunity to maintain connections with their new friends and for the teachers and Site Directors to share ideas, costs, and experiences. This pilot program experienced headwinds during the COVID pandemic period and then the pilot ended after the summer of 2022.