We launched The Scholarship Academy (TSA) with a Scholarship Boot Camp course targeting low-income families in Washington DC and Atlanta. From 2006-2009, TSA assisted each family in creating a realistic 4-year college funding plan, with a focus on entering college and addressing potential barriers to successful matriculation. Our unique approach to private college funding soon garnered recognition from Echoing Green and the Ashoka Changemakers as well as features in Black Enterprise and the NAACP Crisis Magazine.
We shifted from supporting individual families in 2010, scaling our services to high schools and youth-serving organizations with the implementation of our 16-module curriculum. Using a series of counselor trainings, and most recently our Virtual Scholarship Center online course offerings, TSA continues to assist organizations in creating healthier financial aid cultures, where financial aid does not happen to low-income families randomly. Instead, they are supported in creating proactive financial aid plans with minimal debt.
TSA has impacted more than 15,000 families, primarily in Georgia, New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, PA. Our partnerships have grown to include Atlanta Public Schools, the New York College Access for All Consortium, Clayton County Public Schools, Dekalb County Public schools, and the GEAR UP Georgia network.
Our mission is to help low-income students secure resources to pursue higher education opportunities with minimum debt and, thus, create a healthier financial aid culture.
Our vision is that students enter college on a pathway to graduate with as little debt as possible.
