Epoch Dream Center

The Epoch Dream Center is an organization with after-school programming for under-resourced students, kindergarten through 12th grade,  in western Wicomico County, Maryland. Epoch’s mission is to create nurturing relationships that empower, mentor, and encourage students in the areas of academics, character development, and social-emotional wellness.  The purpose of Epoch is to provide its students and by extension their families an expanded social network; one that ensures that each student has what they need, and empowers each student to reach their fullest potential. Finally, Epoch envisions a community in which all students have the support, resources, and opportunities to reach their greatest potential as thriving, compassionate individuals.  

In Wicomico County, over 4,900 children experience food insecurity (Feeding America, 2022), 2,065 families live below the poverty line (NIH, 2022), and 10,705 households struggle to meet the basic cost of living despite earning above the Federal Poverty Level (A.L.I.C.E., 2022). For families stretched this thin, after-school care often becomes an unaffordable luxury, leaving children unsupervised and at greater risk for academic, emotional, and behavioral challenges. The Epoch Dream Center addresses this gap by building a coordinated network of support that connects each child to ways of life that promote healthy relationships, good school performance, and knowledge of community resources. Through this holistic, relationship-based model, Epoch ensures that every student not only gains access to essential services, but also develops the confidence, resilience, and connections needed to break cycles of hardship and achieve long-term well-being.

At present, the Epoch Dream Center is the only operating free after-school time program for youth in the western-most part and predominantly rural area of Wicomico County. Each day of programming, students are broken into classrooms based on grade-level  and provided with a healthy snack, academic tutoring, physical exercise, extracurricular enrichment activities, one-on-one mentoring, lessons in social and emotional wellness, and a nutritious, family-style meal.