When Foster Youth Arrive at College, Ready to Succeed Makes It Home

Holdyn Bray grew up in the foster care system without the basics many take for granted – sometimes she didn’t even have a bed. Like many foster youth, she faced steep challenges just getting to college. For these students, moving into a dorm often marks their first time living on their own, but many arrive with little more than a hoodie and a blanket.

Holdyn found help through Ready to Succeed’s program Project Dorm Room, which provides foster youth with must-have dorm supplies and a sense of community.

“Not having to worry about how I could afford items for my dorm room changed my freshman-year experience,” Holdyn says. “It was just one of the many small but meaningful weights they took off my shoulders.”

Ready to Succeed, founded in 2016, provides college-going foster youth students with the resources, relationships, and opportunities graduate college, launch successful careers and reach their full potential. 

Each year, approximately 4,000 of California’s foster youth age out of foster care and many are left unequipped and unprepared to navigate the higher education system. 

Project Dorm Room, launched in 2017, advances Ready to Succeed’s mission of college and career success by helping foster youth start off with a solid foundation by providing them with everything they need to make their dorm room a welcoming home. 

“Moving is hard enough, but moving into college without support is even harder,” says Tania Suster, Ready to Succeed board member and founder of Project Dorm Room. Suster created the program after realizing that many foster youth face this milestone alone, without the help of family to get settled. She mobilized friends, colleagues, and community members to ensure every foster youth entering UCLA would have the essentials they needed and a volunteer to help them move in and make their beds. The program has since grown to serve over 300 foster youth per year attending colleges across Southern California and has expanded this year to Arizona State and University of Texas.

The program provides over 50 items of dorm room essentials to foster youth including bedding, toiletries, sheets, blankets, pillows, mattress pads, bath towels, laundry bags, hangers, power strips, lamps, shower caddies, school supplies and school swag.

By removing barriers from the start, Project Dorm Room allows foster youth to feel prepared and supported and able to focus on their studies and fully engage in the college experience.

Patrick McCabe, Ready to Succeed co-founder and president, says Ready to Succeed scholars graduate at a rate 10 times greater than foster youth nationwide and are far more likely to secure subsequent full-time employment.

For Holdyn, Project Dorm Room was more than just receiving supplies; it was about discovering a supportive community waiting for her after the hard-won achievement of getting into a top-tier university.

“Foster youth are not used to asking for help. We have built a barrier to be ‘strong and resilient’ on our own,”   Holdyn says. “Ready to Succeed provided me with a sense of community that I had never experienced. I felt seen for the first time.”