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Ready To Succeed LA puts foster youth on fast track

This summer, a large portion of about 80,000 college students will not return to their childhood homes or to their biological families.
[additional-authors]
July 27, 2016

This summer, a large portion of about 80,000 college students will not return to their childhood homes or to their biological families. Many of these 80,000 students, who represent the 20 percent of foster-care youth attending college, face heightened challenges upon entering the workforce, as 75 percent of foster youth have little to no relevant work experience because of a lack of connectedness and, for many, a lack of familial support.

Only about 15 percent of foster youth who attend college graduate. To counter this trend, youth development and college access organizations are creating paths and opportunities for this subpopulation, helping to increase graduation rates and forming more class-to-career connections.

One such organization is Ready To Succeed LA, which seeks to “close the gap between dreams and opportunity for underserved and former foster youth currently in college or recently graduated,” according to co-founder Romi Lassally, a Jewish film producer and media strategist.

“We provide opportunities, resources and access to the social capital and professional networks which we believe are critical to achieving career success,” Lassally said. “It’s what you know, but it’s also who you know that can really make a difference. We want to break the cycle of privilege remaining with the privileged.”

Ready To Succeed LA has created a “career accelerator” program with two tracks: one for those looking for summer internships, the other for job seekers. Both tracks share elements of professional development, which includes executive coaching and career workshops, training in soft skills such as interview techniques and a “toolkit,” which includes a resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, mentor and even, in some cases, a blazer.

“We are on the path to creating a scalable and sustainable model so we can service as many students as possible,” Lassally said. “We hope to become a career center which can become an easy add-on to existing college access organizations, college counseling centers and bridge programs.”

Formed just last December, Ready To Succeed LA is currently guiding 35 college students, formerly in the foster-care system, toward high-level opportunities at companies such as Google, HBO and Bank of America. Ninety percent of the first cohort of undergraduates are working in paid internships this summer, with the other 10 percent holding unpaid positions at nonprofits, to whom Ready To Succeed LA gave both a stipend and a connection to scholarship money from their schools.

Ready To Succeed LA co-founder and New Roads School former headmaster Pat McCabe sees these students as “miracle kids.”

Pat McCabe, co-founder of Readu To Succeed LA. Photo courtesy of Pat McCabe

“These kids come home from their college, whether it be Harvard or Columbia or Cal [Poly] Pomona, and some of them don’t know where they’re living,” McCabe said. “With former foster kids, the simple things are fluid, which is tough. It takes a special kid to take the initiative, to take our help and then build a life upon it.”

McCabe developed a keen interest in the plight of foster, transitional-age youth more than a decade ago, helping to form the New Visions Foundation to place at-risk and underserved youth into private and parochial schools across the city. He also served as executive director of Covenant House California, which provides shelter and career guidance for homeless youth.

McCabe believes foster kids have been “wronged by a broken system.”

“The problems are longitudinal,” he said. “Foster care doesn’t always entail ‘care.’ These kids might end up with psychological issues down the road, and we, as a society, don’t look at the ramifications years later. Just like the epidemic of homelessness, you can’t just throw money at it.”

Ready To Succeed LA emphasizes that it does not give handouts; rather, McCabe says, it “extends its hands out to the students it oversees, hoping that they might then build lives upon a solid foundation, and do our part in rewriting a tragic narrative.”

A challenge for the organization has been to form an “alumni network” of former foster-care kids in the professional world.

“Many of our students struggle with identity issues, feeling like they grew up in a personal diaspora,” Lassally said. “Certainly this feeling of being ‘the other’ is very familiar to us as Jews, and it’s been an interesting exploration for these students to reconcile their identities.”

However, according to McCabe, former students of the New Visions Foundation who understand the myriad difficulties stemming from foster care have decided to “pay it forward” by mentoring the Ready To Succeed LA students.

“When I work with these kids, I become optimistic,” McCabe said. “I see how homeless and foster youth climb upward with the proper attention.”

Both McCabe and Lassally see opportunities for those on the outside looking in to contribute to a positive, foster-care narrative.
“What if there were 30,000 Big Brothers or Big Sisters for the 30,000 L.A.-based foster kids? That’s a pretty big, pretty simple step forward in alleviating the symptoms of the broken system,” McCabe said. “If you can’t donate money, donate time, attention, care.”

“Individuals can join our mentor network, which is an agreement to just be available to our students to share their professional experience,” Lassally said. “Or, they can become career coaches, working with us and our students to make sure they stay on track, nudging them along like a parent would.”

For now, Ready To Succeed LA is content to contribute as much as it possibly can to what McCabe considers a “much larger narrative, with so many other organizations looking to do good.”

Added Lassally, “The students we work with are tenacious and resilient and have big dreams to contribute to the world, to be self-sufficient and successful.

“We are providing access, that crucial next step to transition. It’s hard enough for even the most connected graduates in today’s job market; it’s exponentially harder for former foster kids who rely on us for career counseling and life guidance.”

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