By Reva Gaur

For our latest installment of recommended links, we’re featuring stories on health & fitness, advocacy for after-school and child care programs, free performing arts programs this week citywide, and the financial constraints of many NYC students on graduation day.

“New Study Links Exercise to Higher Pay” (Forbes)

“Children Ask Bloomberg to Restore Their Funds” (Epoch Times)

“Arts Watch: Summer Kicks Off with Make Music NY” (The Lo-Down)

“Too Poor For Their Own Graduation” (NY Times SchoolBook)

Carl (far left) with students from a previous graduating class.

By Carl Foreman

None of the College Prep staff is old enough to have children entering college in the fall, even mathematically. Yet every year around this time we are treated with a slice of the bittersweet pie primarily reserved for the parents of these young adults we send off into the world and beyond our Teen Center’s doors.

Of course none of us can take credit for birthing, feeding and raising any of our teens, nor will we be receiving their bursar bills in the mail; but our investment in their future has been a consistent presence for two and in some cases three years now. We know a student’s tendencies. His propensity to procrastinate, her penchant for reach schools, his singular desire for business schools, her witty sense of humor. We’ve spent at least two school years growing familiar with entire life stories. We appreciate what it took to get to this point for each student: the hardships, the setbacks, the regrouping, and the persevering. We care.

Then the day to celebrate them arrives, and the mind becomes preoccupied with perfunctory concerns like the alignment of words printed on fancy-looking certificates, and whether or not the decorations hung will stick to the ceiling or fall and hit a parent in the head. Are there enough chairs? Do I have pit stains? I hope the parents can find the place. We want everything to be perfect, so they know how proud we are, and to show our congratulations. But there’s no time to think about that, the juice from the veggie tray has spilled onto my pant leg. We anticipate.

They clean up nice too, nicer than we’ve ever seen them, surely. Everyone is here it seems, peering into our strange window of existence. Finally we each have a few words to say directly to our students and the emotions begin to swell. While showering them with praise and encouragement, I realize that I’m more sentimental than I’d care to admit. This always happens. What doesn’t always happen is the cavalcade of students who have decided to return the favor at the podium. The biggest surprise? Our (by far) quietest student coming forth and speaking confidently to the audience in a way none of us has ever had the slightest inclination he ever would. We brim with pride.

We’ll miss them. We will remember them this way much longer than they will remember themselves at this moment. Within months demeanors will be unrecognizable, and “our kids” will be unmistakably adults. We hope they’ll visit.

Carl Foreman is a college advisor in our College Prep Program — a program that ensures that low-income students in Downtown Manhattan have the resources and support to access college and to succeed once they’re there.

By Amanda Brandes

Ten years ago this month, I was wrapping up my senior year of college: turning in my thesis, saying goodbye to good friends… and realizing that I probably should have started applying for jobs back in January.

I got lucky.  Through a connection made the previous summer, a dream job fell into my lap.  2012’s newly minted college graduates might not be so lucky – a recently released study says that half of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. It’s tough, reading statistics like that, to wax poetic about the importance of a college education – and yet, that’s exactly what I’m about to do.

I’m raising money for two fantastic Educational Alliance programs: College Prep, which helps high school students prepare and apply for college, and College Access and Success, which does the same for parents of children in our Head Start preschool.  21^st Century philanthropy demands systemic change and long term results, so I talk a lot about how opening the door to college for low-income adults helps them get better jobs and make more money: Most college graduates earn $1 million more in their lifetimes than non-graduates.  Then I talk about how kids whose parents went to college are more likely to go to college themselves – so, our programs create opportunity not only for current clients but for the generations to come.

And I believe all this, don’t get me wrong.  Reading dire statistics about 50%+ unemployment for college grads only underscores the point.  A college education isn’t just a good thing for our College Prep and College Access participants – it is an essential thing.  If it’s that dire out there for those with degrees, then not having one is simply not an option.

But, that’s not why these programs are so important to me.  When I think back to my college experience, I don’t think of it as job preparation, I think of it as the complete remaking of myself.  College changed how I think and how I look at the world.  It fundamentally shaped the person I am today.  As an undergraduate I learned to step out of my comfort zone and accomplish things I’d never even dreamed of.

And that is why I am SO excited for College Prep’s 40 graduating high school seniors who will head off to college in the fall – and for the College Access parents who will do them same.  I pray that the job market will improve and that they will get the economic benefits they so desperately need – but more than anything I am excited for the opportunity they have earned to reinvent themselves into whoever and whatever they want to be.

Amanda Brandes is the Development Communications Manager in our Financial Resource Development department.

By Reva Gaur

Our amazing video interns, Andrea and Fixx, are at it again! In the second episode of their “Block to Block” series, they recap last month’s graduation ceremony for our College Prep Program. Our staff had some great advice to offer the graduates, who are all heading to college this fall!  (p.s. Didn’t catch the first episode? Watch it here.)

 By Reva Gaur

School’s out for the summer… but where are our College Prep graduates heading in the fall? Maybe to your alma mater? Check out this short video mashup and hear from the students themselves!

By Reva Gaur

Congrats to the class of 2011!  It’s graduation season, and our College Prep Program just held their annual ceremony. Our graduates, many of whom are the first in the families to go to college, are off to schools like Swarthmore, Fordham, Skidmore, lots of great SUNY and CUNY schools, and more. What advice do you have to offer them as they head off to college? Let us know in the comments section!