Program History
CHAD was founded in 1986 under the programmatic and fiscal guidance of the Phillips Brooks House Association, Inc, a student-run non-profit organization based on the campus of Harvard College. The program was conceived with the goal of affording low-income youth in Chinatown the opportunity to spend summer exploring people and places beyond their own community. During its first summer of operation, the CHAD staff was comprised of eight college students who volunteered on weekends to take groups of Chinatown youth on field and camping trips. In 1987, due to overwhelmingly positive feedback from parents, CHAD expanded into a full-time day camp with a staff of seven senior counselors, three junior counselors, and 55 children. As the program developed over the years, CHAD’s mission also expanded in scope.
Today, in addition to providing campers with experiences outside of Chinatown, CHAD is dedicated to the academic, social, and personal enrichment of Chinatown’s youth. Since its inception, the majority of CHAD campers and junior counselors have come from low-income backgrounds that afford few opportunities for summer educational enrichment and employment. Over time, CHAD has become an important commitment that many children in Chinatown look forward to and rely on for support each summer. Likewise, many Chinatown parents consider CHAD an indispensable resource, equal in importance to the conventional learning their children receive during the school year.
At the time of its founding, CHAD was one of a handful of community-based programs that catered specifically to Chinatown’s youth during the summer months. While many other community-based summer programs have cropped up since then, CHAD still finds a unique niche in its clear-cut goals of both academic and personal enrichment, its community roots, and its ability to bring in resources otherwise unavailable to Chinatown.
