Wells Fargo, national scholarship organizations help clear barriers to higher education

For decades, Well Fargo has supported national nonprofit organizations focused on creating lanes of opportunity to college and career success for students, helping many first-generation college students gain access to higher education.

Read more at https://stories.wf.com/how-to-pay-for...


Transcript:
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Lani Lam, College Student, UC Davis
My sister and I are like first-generation. I didn't have my parents to look to
for college help.

Dr. Noël S. Harmon, President and Executive Director, Asian Pacific Islander American Scholars:
Of the students that we serve, over 75% of them are first-generation. And over two-thirds of them live at the poverty line. And so the financial need in our community is high.

Lam: So, I was either reaching out to kind of third-party organizations or I was on Reddit. I was Googling everything.

Blake Scott, College Student, North Carolina Wesleyan University:
My parents instilled in me a great deal of self-respect. You don't only represent you, you represent us and your people. Neither one of my parents graduated from college. So, they said, ‘We’ve made these sacrifices so that you can go live out your dreams, you can graduate college and move on and do bigger and better things for your life.’

Gigi Dixon, Head of External Engagement, Wells Fargo:
We know that education is the great equalizer. And having access to a quality education and higher education is not really a choice for all people. They need scholarships, they need funding, and then they also need access to good training.

Fidel Vargas, President & CEO, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, HSF Alum:
The challenges that they're facing are challenges that many times can only be addressed through experience and through helping the students understand how a process works. Certainly, money is a critical component of that, and how to navigate financial aid, how to navigate the college admissions process if they're in high school, and then once they're in college, how to navigate their college experience so that they can thrive.

Shantae Joseph, Senior Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Consultant, Wells Fargo:
We've invested over $150 million over the last ten years in our eight scholarship fund nonprofit organizations. The funding helps, obviously with scholarship dollars, but other opportunities we have for investment is in student support services. It could be gas money. I need an emergency fund because I have a gap between my scholarship and what I owe for tuition. But even more importantly, it's around student programing.

Jorge Valencia, Executive Director & CEO, Point Foundation:
Wells Fargo has actually helped us launch a number of those. When you look at the statistics of LGBTQ students in high school, many of them who have a desire for post-secondary education need to go to community college to get their grades up. Perhaps that high school experience was pretty terrible. And when we launched our community college program, it was Wells Fargo that allowed us to pilot the program and continues to support that program for us.

Harry Williams, CEO, Thurgood Marshall Fund:
We have students who may be in a situation where they are a thousand dollars short from graduating, and in some cases if you don't pay that thousand dollars, you're
not going to be able to stay in school. You're not going to be able to finish. So, we use some of the programs, scholarship dollars we get from Wells to help with those
what we call, ‘last chance dollars.’

Angelique Albert, CEO, Native Forward Scholars Fund:
I think it's important to recognize that you're not alone and that there are many organizations out here who want to fund you and support you. And Native Forward is one of them. We want to help you get to whatever dream you want to achieve.

Scott:
Native Forward and Wells Fargo providing these scholarship opportunities, it’s just somebody out here cares about me and somebody wants me to go to college, to get a better education to be able to further myself.

Lam:
APIA scholars have lessened the financial burden off of me tremendously. I do have like some financial stability currently as a student. And that has been just wonderful.

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