The Midtown Youth Academy was once a sanctuary for at-risk kids in Shaw and Columbia Heights. Now, it needs help to survive.

Midtown Youth Academy Founder, Eugene R. Hughes Walking under its peeling sign and into 14th Street’s Midtown Youth Academy feels like walking into a museum. The well-traversed wood floors give the room a musty odor and decades worth of photographs and posters adorn the faded walls. Shelves of books line one wall while a row of personal computers line the other. But the institutional feeling goes away as soon as one sees the boxing…