The Virginia-based Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has announced a $500,000 grant to their long-time partners, the College Advising Corps, to provide personalized college advising to high-achieving, low-income students from around the nation using video conferencing and screen sharing, among other technologies.
The foundation invests in programs that support high performing students with financial need and supports scholarships for youth in grades K-12, direct service grants, and knowledge generation and dissemination to advance opportunities for highly motivated low-income youth.
This grant follows the Bloomberg Philanthropies October announcement of a $10 million investment called the College Complete Initiative, which over the next two years aims to increase the number of low-income students who apply to and graduate from top colleges and universities.
The Bloomberg initiative aims to directly help as many as 65,000 students by providing support and guidance on the college and financial aid process. Numerous foundations have joined Bloomberg’s initiative, including Jack Kent Cooke.
“We applaud the Bloomberg Philanthropies leadership,” said Cooke Executive Director Harold Levy, in a statement. “This is potentially a game changer for high-performing poor kids.”
In addition to supporting College Advising Corps, Cooke has announced plans to develop a tool that will provide virtual advising using Chatbot technology supported by a learning computer that will make advising freely available to tens of thousands of additional high-achieving, low-income students each year.
Judith Fenlon is the Editor of the Money and Business section of the Chronicle of Social Change.