A scrapbook showing Hope Scholars from years past. (Credit: Stanley Luo/UC Berkeley)

Over the past two decades, UC Berkeley’s Hope Scholars program has grown from a single leader and student to a full-time team of four, supporting more than 360 students, including 170 this year alone. It supports not just students who have experienced foster care or housing insecurity, but anyone who wasn’t raised by biological parents, like orphans or people whose legal guardians were their relatives. The program offers peer-to-peer mentorship, access to a financial adviser, a mental health clinician and an academic counselor. It includes help with material essentials — move-in packages, a food pantry and a stipend of $3,000 for students’ first year and $2,000 in subsequent years. And, the program hosts game nights and “gratitude dinners” for Thanksgiving.

Hope Scholars’ track record shows “20 years of proving that when we invest in students who have experienced foster care or childhood homelessness, we are investing in brilliance, in leaders, in scholars and changemakers,” said Program Director Charly King Beavers.

Read the whole story from the UC Newsroom

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