Brighter Horizon Foundation

Located in and focusing mainly on the Philadelphia metropolitan area, the Brighter Horizon Foundation supports high school students in becoming the first in their family to pursue a four-year college education. With a focus on academic achievement, mentoring, and financial need, the Organization seeks to open opportunities for underserved youth to whom a four-year degree would otherwise be inaccessible.

Brighter Horizon fulfills this mission through a hands-on approach to college preparation, entrance testing, application processes, financial aid, and mentoring, in addition to internships and full-time employment assistance for first-generation students throughout their education.

Brighter Horizon serves as a critical resource to first-generation students and their families throughout the various stages of the high school-to-college-to employment transitions. Most of these families are unfamiliar with the requirements and expectations of the college admission process, so in today’s institutional rhetoric and procedure-based system, these students are at a significant disadvantage—often compounded by racial and socioeconomic challenges. Brighter Horizon is breaking the cycle of exclusion that these barriers create by supporting and empowering students throughout the college application process.

Through a pragmatic approach, Brighter Horizon constructively counters the anxieties and stresses often experienced by first-generation students to make a four-year college education possible.

What We Do:

• Introduce students to the college search and transition process.
• Provide training for college admissions criteria and planning for deadlines and required fees.
• Offer guidance with college applications, testing and personal essay writing, including completing the Common Application.
• Assist with financial documentation and completing the FAFSA forms.
• Connect students with a larger network of successful first-generation individuals in four-year degree programs, helping foster
mentorships and new relationships.
• Grant scholarships for qualified students.
• Offer mentorship throughout their college career and assistance with internships and full-time job searches.

When financial limitations are preventing a student from pursuing a four-year college degree, Brighter Horizon grants scholarships to assist in the cost of his or her education.

Brighter Horizon partners with school counselors and area organizations working with youth to support pathways to college, including Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia; Providence Center; Girls, Inc. and Cristo Rey High School, with discussions underway to partner with Education Works, Roman Catholic High School, and Jules E. Mastbaum. Our partners refer students and help to accelerate our ability to get to know them, assign appropriate mentors, and assist with college search, preparation and admission. Regular contact with partners provides progress reports to intervene when needed to support students.

We partner with colleges to support the needs of first-generation students and expand their offerings. Our 11 college partners are: Robert Morris, University of Pittsburgh, Bucknell, Carnegie Mellon, Drexel, LaSalle, Lehigh, Johnson C. Smith, University of Maryland, University of Delaware and Rensselaer Polytechnic. We are pursuing Temple, Howard, Spellman, St. Joseph's, Gwynedd Mercy, Elizabethtown, and others in order to expand this resource.

Brighter Horizon believes that internships are a beneficial part of the work force development process. They help develop professional aptitude, strengthen personal character, and provide a greater door to opportunity. Internships provide a broad spectrum of opportunity when seeking and applying for a job after college. The overarching goal of higher education is to adequately prepare for success in future careers. While facing a certain level of academic rigor and gaining important life skills are crucial aspects of career preparedness received while in college, more and more importance is being placed on the value of experiential learning.
In the words of some of Brighter Horizon's Scholar-interns:

 "I learned to look at data, formulate a story and give recommendations";

 "My Quality Assurance internship introduced me to how rates are developed in healthcare financing and enhanced my Excel skills";

 "I was introduced to all aspects of auditing and did a site visit to see construction first-hand -- invaluable since I want to leverage my civil engineering degree in construction management."

Learning doesn't just take place in the classroom -- internships provide students with a wealth of other benefits.

Brighter Horizon has assembled a Board that collectively has on average 10+ years’ experience working together in business successfully executing on major programs and transformation initiatives. Together we have achieved positive measurable results. This allows us to work more effectively as a team, leveraging each other’s strengths. Additionally, more than half the Board are first generation students themselves, and all have a passion for our mission.

The mentor group are individuals that all have a connection to a Brighter Horizon board member or another mentor. They are individuals that one of us have personally helped along the way, worked under our leadership in our professional careers, are friends with another mentor, or are the children of individuals we have supported in their professional journey.

At Brighter Horizon, we believe this is our ‘secret sauce’, and we have every confidence we can retain this ‘culture’ of team and family as we pursue our mission to lift these students to higher levels of achievement, and provide economic opportunity for them and their families.

Brighter Horizon was intentional in developing a model that partners with community organizations and local high schools to further our mission.

Why?

The population of students we are seeking to assist face many challenges, and in many cases academics and admission to college is the least of them. It’s our goal to support our students academically, but also help them manage through cultural barriers, family issues and other hurdles that could stand in the way of them staying on track to achieve their goal of a four-year college degree. We want to ensure a 100% college graduation rate, zero or minimal debt, and post-graduation employment to improve the economic mobility for the student and by extension, their family.

Our partners generally have had a relationship with the student and in most cases, a family member well before we meet them. The knowledge they bring is critical to help us assign the right mentor, accelerate getting to know the Scholar through someone they trust, and gives us data as we guide them through college selection.

We maintain regular contact with our partners as to the progress of the student, and if necessary can both intervene if needed to help a student over a hump.

Over the next 5 years, we will be seeking to double our partnerships focusing on additional high schools and community organizations.

Brighter Horizon has stepped up to provide the needed support, not only financial, but equally important, the
one-on-one mentoring that is demonstrated to result in successful achievement of college enrollment and
college graduation for first generation college scholars.

Short-term: Brighter Horizon’s 21 current Scholars will graduate college & attain a living wage job by 2026, effectively ending the cycle of generational poverty for them and their family within the next five years.
 3 will graduate in 2021,
 3 will graduate in 2023,
 5 will graduate in 2024,
 5 will graduate in 2025, and
 5 will graduate in 2026.

Medium-term: Brighter Horizon’s annual growth plan, toward which this grant will be applied, adds a minimum of 10-15 new students every year, insuring that at least 110 students will graduate between now and 2030. Studies show that families with a college graduate are much more likely to send other family members to college, multiplying the impact of our efforts to impact generational poverty in our community.

And, our graduates commit to “pay it forward” by mentoring other, non-family Brighter Horizon Scholars into and throughout their college careers. Therefore, indirectly, the impact of Brighter Horizon’s college support will expand to a much larger pool of recipients for whom college will be made possible, and supported through academic, psycho-social, and financial assistance.

Long-term: The long-term impact of our model for supporting college success will be an ever-widening, expansive and profound community-wide impact, ending generational poverty in the broader community by growing exponentially overtime.