AmeriCorps: College Bound- Families and Partners Program, Education

College Bound is a nonprofit serving over 600 St. Louis-area students in 2012. We provide promising students from under-resourced backgrounds with the academic enrichment, social supports and life skills needed to apply, matriculate and succeed in four year colleges and careers. Since being founded in 2006, 100% of College Bound students have graduated from high school and matriculated to college, and they are on-track to graduate college at 6 times the rate of their low-income peers!

College Bound would like to nominate Kalli Brelsford, our AmeriCorps staff who developed the Families as Partners program. Kalli focuses on educating and empowering our families on the many steps of the college application process as well as making individual families a part of the larger College Bound family.

Kalli is in constant communication with our families and sends them a monthly event calendar, letters about upcoming workshops, and emails throughout the year. To build positive relationships on the personal level, Kalli assures that a student’s family will receive at least two cards from a staff member highlighting achievements of the student. Families enjoy these cards as well as getting phone calls from staff about their students. Many times families will contact Kalli if they need someone to talk to or have problems they need to discuss with. Even though Kalli is younger than the parents, they respect her knowledge and come to her for guidance on several issues with their students.

Kalli’s knowledge of college access and completion is shared with families through a series of workshops throughout the year. We give families the information needed in order to make decisions like where their student should go to school, how they will pay for their education, and what steps the students need to complete to succeed in school. Due to a combination of factors that Kalli has developed over the three years, our parental participation has increased every year. Kalli actively problem solved on our most difficult issues: transportation and the issues that prevent parents from attending events. By providing dinner and childcare at every meeting, Kalli assured that busy families can attend College Bound meetings.

Kalli created a Parent Leadership Council that meets throughout the year. These dedicated parents and guardians meet to give insight on what families are interested in learning more about and give feedback on programming ideas. This past year the Leadership Council expressed interest in getting more involved in service projects with their students. They were also interested in giving back to College Bound by providing a family lead college skills workshop for students getting ready to leave for college. With Kalli facilitating, they created hands-on activities that taught basic financial planning, dorm safety, basic sewing skills and information on how to take care of common illnesses.

College Bound staff, students and families have had the privilege of working with Kalli over the past three years and have seen the Families as Partners program develop and thrive.