Ehrmann GS founds enrichment program for underprivileged kids

Nick Ehrmann GS's weapon against racial and socioeconomic inequality is a camera.

Ehrmann, a former Teach for America corps member, spoke last night about Project 312, an initiative he founded while in his first year teaching in an inner-city Washington, D.C. elementary school.

Project 312, which is named for the classroom in which Ehrmann taught, provides extensive academic, artistic, and cultural opportunities for his 30 students. It is sponsored by the "I Have a Dream" Foundation, a larger organization that funds educational projects in low-income areas.

Ehrmann first conceived of the idea of Project 312 when he brought a camera to his usually unruly class. He began photographing his students studying maps, with pencils in hand.

"The images were powerful," he said, and student conduct improved with the rising enthusiasm for the pictures of themselves.

"These images fly in the face of every single stereotype we have of inner city kids," Ehrmann said. "This was my way of connecting."

After forging this connection with his students through photography and noting dramatic improvement in his classroom, Ehrmann approached several nonprofit agencies with his idea for Project 312.

He attributed his success in gaining funding from "I Have a Dream" to the photographs of his students that he presented to the philanthropists who, he believes, sensed the strength of his idea and signed on to the project.

According to its website, Project 312's mission is to "to promote educational success for our thirty students by providing a longterm program of academic support, artistic development, cultural enrichment, family outreach and the promise of tuition assistance for higher education."

Through the program, Ehrmann's students — many of whom had never spent a night away from home — attended a wilderness camp in West Virginia, took field trips to cultural events, received scholarships to top private schools and, through a grant, received cameras and weekly photography instruction. They were even asked to have a full-scale museum exhibition in Washington, and were invited to visit President Bush for a speech in the Rose Garden, Ehrmann said.

Ehrmann is now a first-year graduate student at the University in sociology and public policy. Though Project 312 helped the 30 kids in his class, there are thousands that won't have that opportunity. He is here, he said, to "understand why and craft appropriate domestic policies to fix the problem."