According to The Education Trust’s publication entitled, “At a Crossroads: A Comprehensive Picture of How African-American Youth Fare in Los Angeles County Schools”1, if current prison pipelining trends persist, only one out of every twenty African-American kindergartners in California will graduate from a four-year university in the state over the next decade. These trends are especially relevant for foster care youth, who are more likely to become incarcerated or homeless by young adulthood and have some of the lowest college completion rates among youth groups. The tragic reality is that an estimated 70 percent of the California prison population is comprised of foster youth.
In 2013, BSLA spearheaded its First In The Family Scholarship Fund which provides resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless, and LGBTQ youth of color who will be the first in their families to go to college. Responding directly to the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline in communities of color, BSLA is the first atheist organization to address college pipelining for youth of color with an explicitly anti-racist multicultural emphasis. Our annual Awards ceremony takes place in August in Los Angeles, CA. Major sponsors include Atheists United, Freedom from Religion Foundation, Foundation Beyond Belief and the American Humanist Association.
BSLA has expanded to provide two types of scholarships:
First In The Family Humanist Scholarship Award: Awardees receive up to $1,000 in scholarships to assist with their tuition, room and board, books, and other academic resources. This award is available to high school youth who live in the South Los Angeles area, and are accepted into two or four-year colleges. For more information, please click here to go to our Scholarship Application page. BSLA receives applications from outstanding South Los Angeles students who are challenging racism, sexism, homophobia, and injustice in their schools and communities. This award is made possible, thanks to the generous support of several organizations and individuals from humanist and atheist communities.
First In The Family Humanist Scholarship – Freedom From Religion Foundation Catherine Fahringer Memorial Award: Awardees receive up to $2,500 in scholarships to assist with their tuition, room and board, books, and other academic resources. This award is available to high school youth who live in the U.S. who identify as atheist, agnostic, humanist and/or secular, and are accepted into two or four-year colleges. For more information, please click here to go to our Scholarship Application page. This award is made possible, thanks to the generous support of the late Catherine Fahringer through Freedom From Religion Foundation.
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- The Education Trust-West, “At a Crossroads: A Comprehensive Picture of How African-American Youth Fare in Los Angeles County Schools”, published on October 8, 2014.