Education is the key to creating opportunity and changing your life, and my father would be the first one to tell you so. He inspired and reinforced the message for my brothers and me regularly at our dinner table: Education gives you choices, opens doors, enables you to earn a good living and shapes your entire life. He truly believed that lives could be transformed through education regardless of where you were from and how much money you made. He made us believers, too.
My father never graduated from high school. He had to grow up fast when his father passed away and had no choice but to leave school and to go to work. His youth was spent in poverty. My father did all he could to support our family and proudly earned his GED at age 35 through night school. This was a great example to our family of his commitment to education.
Every night, he spent time with my two brothers and me, reviewing our homework and talking about what we had learned that day at school. Committed to our success, he worked with us to develop a vision and plan for our futures.
Despite a lack of funds for college, the vision and drive my father instilled in me at an early age did not waver. It took five years of working full time and attending night classes to complete my first year of college credits. After 11 years of struggle and sacrifice, I earned my law degree and eventually went on to open a business in Washington, D.C., with my husband.
The benefits of a college education are irrefutable: higher salaries and lower unemployment rates. Cities with a higher percentage of college graduates have lower crime rates. Education benefits individuals, families, communities, cities and counties.
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, only one in five Milwaukee residents age 25 and older has a college degree. In Milwaukee Public Schools, approximately 67% of students graduate from high school. Of that, less than 35% enroll in college within a year of graduating.
How can we reach those who choose not to continue their education? How do we program students at an early age to see college admission as achievable and beneficial? One such initiative, right here in Milwaukee, has been achieving remarkable results in graduating inner city youths, specifically young girls and women, and continuing their college educations.
PEARLS for Teen Girls is accomplishing radical change in the lives of young women. It’s all about investing in the lives of young women and helping them build leadership skills such as self-reflection, critical thinking, sound decision-making, goal-setting, clear communication and personal accountability.
When young women, regardless of race or their family’s income level, receive the kind of care provided by PEARLS, the results are staggering. In 2011, each and every active high school senior enrolled in the PEARLS program graduated from high school. Even more impressive, every single one of those girls was accepted to at least one college. Every single girl will have the opportunity to continue their educations. It’s remarkable.
There is a great need in our community for organizations and initiatives like this. In the past four years, PEARLS has grown from serving 120 girls annually to an estimated 1,100 girls in the Milwaukee area in 2012. Mark my words, in a few years, cities from around the nation will be looking at Milwaukee wondering how they can re-create the model PEARLS has achieved.
The real need for today’s youth is hope and vision. For some Milwaukee girls, PEARLS creates hope and instills a sense of vision in them. For me, my father’s dedication to my future and his deep value of education inspired me to work hard and stay focused on my schooling.
Years later, I am where I am because of the path my father helped lead me down. I am excited to see the different paths taken by PEARLS girls, as many of them will change their futures and their families by becoming college graduates. -jsonline.com
