CONTACT: Patricia Viets FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/23/96
When Eveline Cropper-Conquest received a telephone call from a high school guidance counselor about tutoring students, she never dreamed that less than one year later she would be receiving the Governor of Virginia's Business Education Partnership Award.
Cropper-Conquest, a secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Command and Data Acquisition Station in Wallops, Va., received the award from Virginia Governor George Allen for her work with students.
Cropper-Conquest said that a telephone call a year earlier was the impetus for the development of HELP, Inc., a tutoring program for students.
HELP, the Horntown Educational Learning Project, was initially organized to tutor high school students from Horntown, in Accomack County, to achieve better grades. The focus quickly spread to elementary school students as well.
"Miss Eveline," as the children call her, coordinates a group of volunteers who meet at Tabernacle Baptist Church Annex to assist students with their homework and to provide tutoring in various subjects. Miss Eveline also spends extra time beforehand canvassing the Horntown neighborhood, picking up children and taking them to the Annex. When the sessions are over, she takes them home again.
About 100 children have received help with homework or tutoring through HELP.
Miss Eveline initiated a summer pre-kindergarten program that graduated 27 two-to-six year old students. These students learned basic skills to keep them from entering school already at risk. She also entered into partnership with NASA to provide a Saturday Youth Program (SYP). This program introduces elementary and middle school children to a variety of science and math careers. One of the goals is to target minority middle-school children so that they will be motivated to maintain their academic focus throughout high school. These 30 minority children will provide a pool of eligible candidates for scientific internships that target sophomores and juniors.
Cropper-Conquest is the first and only minority woman to sit on the Accomack County School Board. She also chairs the Wallops CDA EEOAC Community Outreach Committee. She lives in Horntown with her husband, Gregory, a Baptist minister.
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