MAKING STEPPINGSTONES
FROM OUR OBSTACLES

 By Ken Harvey

 Many students face great challenges in pursuing the American Dream -- lack of English proficiency; poverty; no place quiet to study in their small, crowded homes – if they have a home; discrimination; hard, back-breaking labor before and after school; frequent migration in pursuit of employment; and missed educational opportunities. But those students with courage, commitment, consistent effort, and clear vision CAN succeed against all obstacles.

You, too, can do it.

Especially for those families where no one has ever attended college, it is a frightening, intimidating, seemingly impossible prospect. Parents have no experience on which to give advice, and, if anything, wonder how valuable a college education really would be to the family. The family needs their children to help earn income for the family now – not in four or five years.

Helping one child prepare and successfully get into and through college changes the destiny of an entire family and can ultimately impact hundreds of lives very directly in just two or three generations. And that doesn’t count the thousands of people these bright, hard-working young people can impact as part of their careers in science, education, communications, business and government.

This is the importance of such programs as the Student Leadership Program, Gear Up, Upward Bound and CAMP. Students must believe. They must dream. They must see a practical way to achieve their dreams. And then these students who have learned to work and survive since they were in diapers WILL make the sacrifices necessary to achieve their dreams. They can contribute their special gifts to our society, and once again prove the genius of the American system, and that this is still the land of opportunity.

You CAN do it! We can do it! Si, se puede!!

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