Educational Student Tours Inc

Our strategies include recruiting students for our program who are majoring in science, technology, engineering, math, and healthcare. These are the critical areas in the California workforce where there is little to no diversity. After recruiting these students, we work hard to match them to donors who fund scholarships or internships for students with these majors, thereby almost guaranteeing that they will finish. Other strategies that we employ include tuition assistance, assistance with finding the right college, assistance with college, financial aid, year round housing and scholarship applications, comprehensive tours of historically black colleges and universities with a proven track record of helping students graduate within four years, and mentoring during four years of college.

The internal resources that we have for meeting our goals include a dedicated staff and board members who are primarily higher education professors or former college administrators, a budget that will reach over $1 million this year, and a cadre of experts who volunteer to assist our program participants in the area of financial aid, scholarship searches, coaching and mentoring. The external resources that we have include strong partnerships (United Parcel Service, Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Genentech Pharmaceutical, Southern California Edison, Bridge Builders Foundation and the Children, Youth and Family Collaborative), our network of Black churches and the influence of the pastors that lead those churches.

We know that we are making progress because we collect both qualitative and quantitative data. We measure the percentage of program participants who enter four-year colleges, percentage of program participants who attend HBCUs, the percentage of program participants who enter the workforce, their job title, major, and year they graduated. Our volunteers collect the data using surveys and making follow-up phone calls. After we collect the data, it is shared with our Board to refine the key strategies outlined in our five-year strategic plan.

Much of the Black population in California experiences pervasive systematic disadvantages that frequently impede their educational progress. These include: low-quality schools found in predominately low-income and Black communities, a poverty rate that is three times that of Whites in California because 55 percent of all black children live in single-parent homes, and an unemployment rate that is double that of whites. Education has the power to transform this narrative. Significant research has demonstrated that bachelor's degree holders are more likely to be employed, less likely to rely on social services, less likely to be incarcerated, and more likely to have children who will also early bachelor's degrees. So far, in the past seven years of collecting data, our data shows that 99.9% of all our tour participants enroll in college. Our one outlier is a foster youth who chose to go into the military. We have the power to address the challenges facing African Americans attempting to earn a four-year degree. What's next is that our organization, which is 31 years strong, will continue doing what we do best--postiviely impacting a student's access to an educational opportunity that will improve their overall quality of life. As we all know education is the way out of poverty.