The YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee recently celebrated the graduation of 49 young people from the Downtown YMCA Center’s Sponsor-A-Scholar program.
The YMCA mentoring program, Sponsor-A-Scholar, is a pre-college program providing academic, personal and financial support to disadvantaged high school students who wish to pursue post-secondary education. Since the program began in 1996, 98 percent of the scholars have graduated from high school, and 95 percent have pursued post-secondary opportunities. Sponsor-A-Scholar is a joint project of the YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and Milwaukee Public Schools.
The Class of 2009 consists of 49 unique stories of dedicated young people overcoming adversity in order to reach their academic goals.
Precious Hill, a Bay View High School senior, is one of those students now looking forward to graduation. Precious grew up living in fear of her dangerous neighborhood and the crime-filled streets in her community. When she entered high school, she decided that she wanted to rise above her surroundings and refused to live in fear any longer. This fall, Precious will continue to rise to new challenges when she begins her tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she plans to major in public relations.
The Sponsor-A-Scholar program will host its annual celebration dinner at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, May 19 at Marquette University’s Alumni Memorial Union.
The ceremony is an opportunity to publicly congratulate the graduating Class of 2009 and to celebrate their subsequent enrollment in college. The next class of scholars, the Class of 2012, will be formally inducted into the program by the Class of 2009, a group of their peers who have lead by example within Milwaukee Public Schools for the past four years.
