Home

             
College preparation program started in CA

Education is an important investment for our children, and it is something that the Arab Cultural and Community Center in California has been working hard on since the start of its youth program.

This year in cooperation with from the American Association of Yemeni Scientists and Professionals (AAYSP), a college preparation program is born. The aim of this program is to help students whose parents did not go to college see college as an attainable goal they can reach.

It’s difficult for many students to see a clear road map for college. The first phase of this program is intensive workshops on the different aspects of college. The first of these workshops was “Getting to know your School’s College and Career Center”.

In this workshop, the ACCC and AAYSP mentors took high and middle school students to nearby universities and showed them how important of a resource it is. Next was “The Differences between 2 and 4-year Colleges and Which One is Right for you”. In this workshop mentors went into the details of community, state and U.C college systems. Afterwards, went on to discuss how to pay for College with FAFSA forms/Scholarships and other funding.

This was a very important workshop. In it, students learned the different ways of how college can be paid for them. After finishing these workshops, the group was led for college tours.

None of the participating students have ever been to a college, so mentors wanted them to experience college first hand. The group took students on tours of City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, and the University of California at Berkeley. During these field trips, mentors explained to students a typical college day. Current college students spoke to students about their experiences going to college.

There was also a question and answer session at the end where they engage in an active discussion with the college students. Going to visit the colleges showed the high school students the different parts of college life like sports, club activities and how it differs from high school.

The last phase of the college preparation program will be choosing a Major/Job-Shadowing. The community has a great network of Arab professionals in almost every field. ACCC & AAYSP want our high school students to be exposed to what these different professionals do and if they could see themselves in their place in the future.

For students whose parents did not attend college it is really easy to drop out and not see how important of an investment college is. We here at the Arab Cultural & Community Center and AAYSP hope that this college preparation program will help these students not only see College as an attainable goal, but also to inspire them to strive to make their dreams a reality.

BY MOKHTAR ALKHANSHALI
YEMENI AMERICAN NEWS
SAN FRANCISCO , CA