Year Honored: 2016

Biography

Chandra G. Pitts is a “driven social entrepreneur.” She began her career organizing youth in Jamaica whose families could not afford to send them to school and continued her school-based community service in the years since. In 2008, Pitts developed “the largest school-based mentoring program in Delaware’s Christina School District, serving 247 at-risk youth.”

She founded The Village Learning Center in 2009, “securing a 2.1 million dollar federally funded contract to continue her work with marginalized youth.” Her model was adopted by both the Delaware and New Jersey Departments of Education, serving 47 schools and creating over 60 new jobs. This program led to her next venture – One Village Alliance, a non-profit organization of which Pitts is founder and CEO. Part of One Village Alliance is the “Girls Can do Anything!” program that has “engaged more than 1300 phenomenal females to redefine womanhood and what it means to be a girl."

Pitts was named 2015 Hometown Hero by Glamour Magazine, and as of 2021 is the youngest member to be inducted into the Delaware Women’s Hall of Fame.

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Sources and Additional Readings

Creekmur, B. C. (2018, March 6). #ahhpowerfulwomen: Chandra G. Pitts uses hip-hop to create kings. AllHipHop. Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://allhiphop.com/features/ahhpowerfulwomen-chandra-g-pitts-uses-hip-hop-to-create-kings/

Delaware Afro-Latinas Oral History Collection . Manuscript and Archival Collection Finding Aids . (n.d.). Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://library.udel.edu/special/findaids/view?docId=ead%2Fmss0661.xml%3Btab

DoniMortonGlover. (2010, December 15). Chandra Pitts, Executive Director, One Village Alliance. YouTube. Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGAZbHvizeE

Home. One Village Alliance. (n.d.). Retrieved January 18, 2022, from https://www.iamthevillage.org/