The VanCollins Group [VCG] is a nonprofit organization that provides targeted and collaborative support to enhance student engagement of Black males at under resourced schools in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. VCG fosters a commitment to Black youth that will encourage competence, promote confidence, foster connection, build character, and cultivate compassion.

We believe that education unlocks the mind, destines the path toward success, and provides unencumbered access to comprehensive life success. We are devoted to improving the lives of Black boys to position them as powerful resources and examples to those around them and as resilient, influential contributors to the world in which they live.

Jeff VanCollins, an attorney and education advocate, began volunteering as a mentor to elementary school-aged Black boys with Young Black Men with Promise in 2003, where he found his true calling as an education advocate. This enabled him to integrate his personal and professional identities and values, and focus on following his passion. In 2008, Jeff began providing pro bono services to families in need when the intervention of a third party was necessary to ensure that appropriate education services were available to students in need.

Over the years, Jeff began to engage his mentees in goal-setting and action-planning activities, empowering them with critical thinking and questioning skills as active learners, an instrumental concept that now underlies the Group’s programs and activities.

Jeff earned his Juris Doctor in 1998 from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Law, concentrating his course work in Civil Rights / Civil Liberties Discrimination and Education Law. Jeff also completed his Doctor of Philosophy in Education Policy, Planning, and Administration in 2008 from The University of Maryland.  He is licensed to practice law in Maryland and the District of Columbia.