To College and Beyond

Yasmin Delahoussaye grew up in kinship care, which is as close to foster care as you can get. The relatives that took Delahoussaye in after her mother passed away when she was young had foster kids living in their home. She was low-income, a Pell Grant recipient and, by the time she was 18 years old, she was on her own. 

Delahoussaye knew first-hand what a hard and tough life foster care kids had. She also knew how hard it was for those kids to get to and through college, because she was one of them. But she now holds a doctorate from UCLA because, as Delahoussaye says of herself, she was one of the lucky ones.

In 1987, Delahoussaye conducted her first Black College Tour, showing 35 amazed students a window into a life they could only have imagined. It was a huge success. This led her and her husband, Greg Delahoussaye, to establish Educating Students Together (EST), a college access program dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty and improving the quality of life for foster and low-income youth by helping them access and complete higher education.

The statistics are sobering. According to a 2021 Chapin Hall research study and National Student Clearinghouse data, just about 1 in 10 CalYOUTH (transition-age foster youth) had completed a college degree by age 23. And, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, only 14% of low-income students earn a college degree. 

To combat this inequity, EST has developed a free, multi-tiered program to help its students during pre-college, in-college, and post-college. Their programs cover everything from assisting students with standing out from the crowd during the admissions process to workforce assistance once they graduate.

“We understand the value of education,” Co-founder and Executive Director Greg Delahoussaye says. “We understand what education did for us, for the young people we serve. They don’t have the resources… their counterparts have. And by giving them that support, it makes a real difference in their lives.”

This year all of the foster care youth EST worked with were accepted into four-year colleges and 64% of EST students received full-ride scholarships (compared to the 1% of high school students nationally who receive such scholarships).

“We have two goals: It’s always to improve the program… and the other is to show impact… We help them get into their dream school… And then find the money to pay for it,” Yasmin Delahoussaye, co-founder and program director of EST, says.