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From Treats to Scholarships, Orphan Foundation Helps College Youth Achieve
Toni Little
Without a support system, most students would have a hard time getting through college. That's especially true for youth transitioning out of foster care.
With no family to rely on, Toni Little, who had been in foster care in Connecticut, found that support from the Orphan Foundation of America (OFA), which gave her a $4,000 scholarship, as well as care packages, mentors, counseling and guidance to help her through Johnson State College in Vermont.
"Financially, I can't afford college," says Little, 23, a junior studying creative writing at the small liberal arts college. "The scholarship enables me to be here and not have to worry about my finances and where I'm going to come up with the money to pay for school – which was my biggest worry during my first couple of semesters."
In addition to her OFA scholarship, Little also receives funding from the federal Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program, which offers scholarships to youth who are currently in foster care and those who have transitioned out of foster care to enable them to attend colleges, universities and vocational training institutions. ETV scholarships are renewable, and can be as much as $5,000.
In many states, the ETV program is administered by the state child welfare or social service agency. But for the past six years, OFA has been administering the federal ETV program in nine states, due to the foundation's solid track record of assisting college students formerly in foster care. To Eileen McCaffrey, OFA executive director, the ETV program is about more than just handing out money.
"This is really about outcomes," she says. "We want to be able to say how many young people received a scholarship – and then, how did they do in school? Did they come back a second year, a third year? And did they graduate? This program can help young people come out on the other side as young professionals. They can leave their foster care label behind. That's our commitment, to move them beyond."
Toni Little is an example of how well the OFA program works.
At age 8, Little and her younger brother were put in foster care because of their mother and stepfather's addiction to heroin.
"We didn't go to school. We didn't have clothes. We actually lived in an abandoned building and slept on couch cushions on the floor," Little says. "We didn't have any food to eat at all. At 8, I weighed 40 pounds. And that is when the state took us away."
Little dropped out of high school at age 17, but she went back to night school to earn her diploma. She went to college without family support or a way to pay for it. She struggled during her first few semesters, she says, because worrying about paying tuition affected her concentration in class. Today, with the help of her OFA scholarship and support, as well as ETV funding, Little is on the Dean's and President's lists and will graduate in spring 2011.
"Dropping out of high school has been my biggest regret," she says. "Now that I am in college I have to prove to myself that I can still make it."
The OFA and ETV scholarships reward that kind of determination to "move beyond," McCaffrey says.
"The question we ask young people is 'What are you doing today so that five years from now or 20 years from now your picture will be very different?'" McCaffrey says. "You cannot walk into a potential employer and say, 'I was in foster care. Poor me.'"
Although qualified students across the country are eligible for a federal scholarship, OFA administers the ETV program in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, New York and Ohio. About six years ago, OFA began administering the program in those nine states because of the foundation's success with its own 25-year-old scholarship program, which had been shown to have improved retention and graduation rates for non-traditional students.
"This is a higher education program; it is not an entitlement," McCaffrey says. "So it really requires expertise in financial aid, coaching, and academic support systems, in addition to, of course, the fiscal management and the record keeping and data collection. Really the emphasis in this program is on post-secondary support. That is not something that social services has the resources to do well."
For that reason, McCaffrey would like to expand the foundation's support of the program in other states.
"When you talk to programs right now the conversation is about getting young people into school, not about how many are going to stay in school," she says. "We think all states should be focused on the outcomes, and the outcome is completing something and going on into the workforce."
OFA's program has shown success in keeping young people in school.
Ohio's program reported nine graduates in the 2004-2005 school year, and 33 last year. New York reported eight graduates in 2004-2005, and 40 this year. Not all states have had such dramatic increases – North Carolina's graduates went up from nine to 12, for instance – but the retention efforts show signs of working.
McCaffrey attributes the increases to OFA's intense support systems.
ETV recipients in OFA states are counseled from beginning to end about which schools to attend, which classes to take. They are coached about advocating for themselves. They are assigned mentors.
Toni Little says the e-mail messages she gets from her online mentor and the check-ups she receives from her scholarship mentor are invaluable.
"They're kind of like my new family," she says.
Little especially appreciates one of OFA's specialties: the Care Package Program. OFA sends carefully-prepared care packages to scholarship recipients three times a year, for a total of about 7,500 packages. Each package contains items such as toiletries, calendars, goodies and snacks, crossword puzzles, scarves, sunscreen and motivational cards personally penned by volunteers.
Whenever she gets a slip telling her she has mail, Little says she gets excited. "I never get mail because I don't have family," she says. "So the care packages are amazing. Just being able to go to your mailbox and have something in there just for you, it's great."
Little enjoys all the treats packed into the box, but mostly she says she cherishes the love it's packed with.
"Just knowing there are people out there who have never met you, but they want you to know that you are loved and cared for," she says, "In the last package I got, there was a card, and it was obvious an adult had written, 'You're awesome.' But a little kid had drawn a picture. It made me cry."
