OUR HISTORY

One of the best.

RISE was founded in 2003 by Paul Penniman, who left a successful tutoring business to provide services for the low-income youth of Washington, D.C. Since its founding, RISE has helped over 3,000 students to improve their academic performance and test scores. Since 2013, RISE has earned the distinction as "one of the best" non-profit organizations in the Washington, D.C. area, according to the Catalogue for Philanthropy.

OUR MISSION

Equality through educational resources.

RISE’s mission is to level the educational playing field in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. RISE provides the same quality educational resources for low-income students, such as tutoring and college mentoring, that are available to students of means - free of charge. RISE believe’s that the greater the need of the student, the greater the expertise of the instruction and mentoring should be.

“Until we get equality in education, we won’t have an equal society.” - Sonia Sotomayor

OUR VISION & IMPACT

Ending systemic racism.

RISE aims to end the systemic racism that pervades our educational system and hopes to spread to more schools around Washington, D.C. Many students have said they would be “on the streets” if not for RISE. RISE makes high school and college graduation possible for students who had no hope before they began with RISE.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” - Barack Obama