Fostering Higher Education
Fostering Higher Education is our program desighned to support youth that age out of foster care in pursueing higher education. It is a program that offers two year courses of mentorship, that address the six common pitfalls of higher education.
Only 2% of foster youth successfully graduate from university (Nagano 2024), whilst 90% that do enroll drop out in the first year. This is something that both reflects and sets them up for disadvantage throughout life. One key contributor to this is a lack of personal support, which usually comes from family ties, in guiding individuals through the education process.
Our project aims to address the lack of personal support and guidance. This is achieved through providing foster youth mentoring from successful professionals from their senior year of high school to their first year of university. The project will collect volunteer professionals, train them in areas such as ‘the six pitfalls of higher education,’ and then pair them with a youth.
The project will first and foremost provide for the young people enrolled in it by providing them with support and resources from experienced, sympathetic adults. And by extension, providing foster youth with better chances at success in higher education and the beginnings of a professional network.
The program is laid out into three stages, the first being goal setting and building a relationship based on trust.
The second is providing young people with a toolkit that supports them in navigating the six pitfalls of higher education: navigating your education career independently, time management, sleep management, finances, relationship management, alcohol and drug use, and stress management.
The final stage of the program that students benefit from is one-on-one and group mentoring.
More Information
Attatched are the documents that support our program and provide more detailed information:
To get involved as a donor or mentor click the respective button below.