Teenage foster children transfer from school to school as they move from foster home to foster home. The lack of consistency in education is one of the reasons that 50% of foster youth do not graduate high school. This year in Houston, over 100 foster children beat those odds and received their high school diplomas.
Houston Celebrates Its Graduates
On Friday, June 17th the Hay Center, a Houston program that serves youth in foster care, held a parade to celebrate the graduates. The parade gave the community the chance to celebrate the amazing feat of the 100 students and allowed the graduates to celebrate themselves and their peers.
Graduating high school can be taken for granted, but not by these 100 amazing students:
I am very excited to be graduating, I’m going to go to college and get my bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate. So I’m feeling on top.
Foster Youth Education
Supporting students in foster care is crucial in keeping them on a path toward high school graduation and beyond. Nationally, only 3% of foster youth graduate college. The best way to increase college graduations is to increase high school graduation rates and support foster youth’s dreams of higher education.
You have to think about how hard it is for a young person in foster care even to make it through high school. They change schools so many times and they have to really advocate for themselves.
When the graduates spoke about their experience in school and their accomplishment of graduating, their responses echoed hard work.
You have to push through.
How You Can Support
Investing in the education of foster children starts in elementary school. When students are given the support they need to succeed academically develop a positive relationship with their education that can carry them through high school and beyond.
So you can support the education of foster youth by donating towards a Back to School Pack. This program provides foster children with the essential supplies they need to succeed in school HERE.
