Seattle Education Access

Description

SEA fights poverty and homelessness by helping marginalized youth make strong transitions to local community colleges and four year universities. Many of our students have been homeless; others are immigrants, foster youth, or single parents. What they all share in common is a strong motivation to complete their educations, coupled with a lack of adequate resources to achieve their goals. We provide our students with the financial and social resources they need to excel academically, as well as personalized, compassionate, respectful academic advising and advocacy. As a result, our students are succeeding in college and leaving poverty behind, preparing to give back to society as professionals and leaders of the next generation.

Since 2002 SEA has provided higher education advocacy and opportunity to people struggling to overcome poverty and adversity. We provide marginalized, high-potential youth and young adults with the resources they need to transition successfully to college, so that they can finish their educations and contribute to society in professional careers. Our outreach is focused on youth and young adults whose academic progress has been derailed by homelessness, trauma, and poverty.

Our students face significant barriers to college success: lack of housing, family support, money for tuition, books and food, and mentors and tutors whom they can trust. They also suffer from low societal expectations and support. By removing these barriers, we open up the world of academic and career opportunities to our young students -- the same opportunities that are available to youth from wealthier families.

Through our College Success Program, we provide free academic advising, career counseling, scholarships, tutoring, and advocacy. Now in its seventh year of service, our College Success Program has a proven track record of helping marginalized youth succeed in college. We are responding to an urgent and critical need with a bold new approach that is unduplicated in Washington State. Our staff works with students to create an individualized academic achievement plan tailored to each student's gifts and goals. We teach our students how to navigate the educational system, get federal financial aid, compete for private scholarships, make a budget, register for classes, pick the right campus and degree program, and effectively access campus services. We provide long term social support, cheering the student on toward graduation. We also operate our own scholarship fund that supplements their financial aid package.