The 1214 Foundation was founded in the wake of the mass shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012, which claimed the lives of twenty children and six adults. Michael Baroody, MD, founded the 1214 Foundation in the summer of 2013 to provide much-needed support to the local youth community. Our mission is to empower local children to overcome daily challenges, embrace their talents, and cultivate character strengths, emotional agility, and confidence in the face of trauma.

Our initial ARC program (Aspire. Reach. Confidence) was developed by Tom Kolidz, the former director of the Yale School of Management’s Leadership Development Program. The team of 20 leadership, psychology, and coaching experts developed the ARC curriculum. Two 90-minute sessions are dedicated to strengths, another two to confidence, and the final couple of lessons are about emotional regulation. Instead of boring lectures, we offer our students engaging, age-appropriate exercises and activities that teach them to put their new knowledge to practical use in everyday situations. Charades, scavenger hunts, and self-portrait drawing activities help develop our participants’ strength in a lively and memorable manner. Moreover, each of our lessons is designed to support and reinforce each other.

We also offer our students a chance to keep practicing their new skills through mastery experience in our NewArts project. Our participants get to audition, rehearse, and perform Broadway-style musicals. We employ Broadway directors and actors to make the whole process demanding and rigorous, pushing our students outside their comfort zones to reinforce the lessons learned through the ARC program. As of now, we’ve already produced 10+ Broadway-style performances, including Matilda, with over 450 children involved and an overall audience attendance of over 12,000.

The 1214 Foundation is a nonprofit organization, much like other national and international character development organizations, but we operate on a local level. We cooperate with multiple organizations, including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale School of Management, Find Your Light, Baroody Plastic Surgery, Milk, Praxair, Walnut Hill Community Church, Maplewood, and others. We welcome personal and corporate tax-deductible donations to help us continue supporting the local youth community and enhance our experiential learning character-building programs.