FOSTER PROGRESS
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Mission Statement
Foster Progress empowers youth from foster care to attain a college degree and transition into adulthood successfully though mentorship, advocacy, and educational opportunity.
About This Cause
youth who experience foster care. For example, by age 26, 31% of these young adults have experienced homelessness and an astonishing 57% have been incarcerated, while only 3% will finish a college degree. We aim to move the needle on these statistics by helping youth pursue a brighter future through higher education. Our mission says, “Foster Progress empowers Illinois youth currently or formerly in foster care to attain a college degree and transition into adulthood successfully by providing mentorship, advocacy, and educational opportunity.” Foster Progress was founded by Chicago Public School teacher and foster parent, Kate Danielson, with founding board Chair Ashley Lepse Keme, who was adopted through foster care as a child and was one of the 3% of foster youth to achieve a college degree. Our first programs included College Road Trips, the Mentoring & Scholarship Program, and tools and training for teachers, foster parents, youth, caseworkers, and higher education staff. We have grown from just three students in the beginning to impacting hundreds of youth through our trainings and 20 students in our high-impact Mentoring & Scholarship Program. Our strategic goals are to match over 70 youth with mentors. While this isn’t a large number of individuals, the impact on these students’ lives is deep and reverberates throughout the foster care system, as outlined in the next section.