Helping Teens Attend College
Our Club is hosting the Los Amigos Conference on Higher Education this weekend. Six years ago, Mario Pena, a former Club member, came to me and wanted to collaborate on a conference to help teens get to college. He was a sophmore at Daniel Webster College and working full-time at the Club in Nashua. I figured we’d each get a van load of teens, meet on a college campus and get the admissions office to put together something. Mario had bigger dreams. He walked up to a Senior VP at BGCA and asked for her help. He hooked her, the President of Daniel Webster College and we had close to 100 people at that first confernce. It is for teens from backgrounds that don’t typically attend college. Most would be the first in their family to go to college. The conference is for both those teens who have decided to go to college, but need some tools, as well as those who need to see that college can be for them. We have had some great success stories. One is a group of triplets from Newport, RI. They attended the conference as sophmores on the verge of dropping out of High School. In September, all 3 will be enrolling in college.
This year we have 175 registered attendees at Clark University. I’m really excited about this year’s conference. The video above came from our steering committee weekend (thanks to John Clements and Kristin Hoops for thier tireless editing). The teens choose the theme, sessions and general direction of the conference. They will act as MC’s and hosts throughout the weekend. We have great general session speakers who share similar backgrounds as our members. Sessions will teach teens about the admissions process as well as what to expect out of college life. We will have a college fair. Club members will sleep in dorms on Clark’s campus and have social events both on campus and at our Club. Clark has been amazingly generous to us as a host. It should be a great weekend.
If anyone would like to support this conference, please click here. Please make sure you put Los Amigos in the comments. Thanks.
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