Home > News > College tour bus returns home
College tour bus returns home
27th of April 2009
Sixteen youth recently returned from a tour of six colleges and universities in Virginia and North Carolina. Their dream of a college education is one step closer to reality. Now we must build the SBY College Scholarship Fund.
For 5 days, the group traveled to North Carolina Central University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, St. Augustine’s College, Shaw University, Hampton University and University of Virginia. They had an inspirational visit with Anthony Ross, former Sasha Bruce Independent Living Program resident and current student at St. Augustine’s College. Anthony was gracious enough to share his story and give a motivational message encouraging our youth to “do whatever it takes to get to college and let the Sasha Bruce staff know your goals and they will help you achieve them!” The students also had a chance to sit in on a freshman orientation class.
Over the course of the week, the young people were inspired to go after their dreams and began to realize that going to college is an attainable goal. Everywhere the group went, they were praised by others for their polite, mature, and fun-loving behavior! On the way home, Ms. Courtney Braxton, Mr. George Ransom and Mr. Stephen Cherenfant shared with the group how much fun they had and how glad they were to make friends who were positive and goal-oriented. Stephen said, “When we all get to college and we look back on our experience, we’ll all be able to say, ‘it started on this college tour.’”
To support the educational aspirations of these and other SBY teens, our Youth-Led Program will be offering free SAT and ACT preparation courses. But we must do even more. Indeed, it is important to realize that many of the 1,500 youth that we serve each year have never been outside of their neighborhood and all of them come from broken homes. For many, daily, often desperate struggles to survive—let alone going to college—have been the norm. So we are compelled to raise funds for our College Scholarship Program and pleased to announce a special fundraising event May 28 at a dinner hosted by The British Ambassador and Lady Sheinwald at their residence. Dinner will be followed by testimony from the winner of our scholarship competition and an intimate performance for the audience of 100 by world-renowned mezzo-soprano, and D.C. native, Denyce Graves. Contact James Beck at 202-675-9340 if you’d like more information.