Cash for College at Local High Schools

We hosted two Cash for College events at the end of January to provide parents and teens with the resources they need to apply for financial aid and scholarships. Our College Bound Director Yesenia Aguilar and College Bound Outreach Coordinator Marcey Abrons helped coordinate the events at San Pedro High School on January 29 and Banning High School on January 30 and provided one-on-one assistance to the families that attended.

Our Cash for College event at San Pedro High School.

The collaboration with the two local high schools, which we serve with a school Club site at each location, allowed us to more easily assist high school students in our communities with goals of attending college. The California Student Aid Commission (CSAC) provides the workshop tools and the presence of our College Bound Case Managers resulted in successful events at both schools.

The workshops focused on the FAFSA application and California Dream Act application. After bilingual presentations in English and Spanish about the opportunities available and steps necessary to apply, our College Bound team provided individual guidance on filling out the applications on computers provided by the schools. CSAC provides $1,000 scholarships, to be given at random, based on the amount of attendees who fill out a survey after the workshop. Because of our high attendance of 146 participants and 116 surveys completed at the San Pedro High School event, we secured five $1,000 scholarships and saw similar results at our Banning High School event.

Securing the resources necessary to attend college is a major component of our College Bound program. We host workshops for high school students at our San Pedro, Wilmington and Port of LA Clubs on different financial aid options and provide individual assistance on FAFSA and scholarship applications. We helped our 2013 high school graduates earn nearly $700,000 in scholarships and over $3,000,000 in financial aid. Our goal is to increase this number for our 2014 graduates as we serve more youth and help them overcome barriers that prevent them from accomplishing their goals.