Grant awarded to Portland-based Native American Youth and Family Center

The Oregon University System awarded a $56,250 grant earlier this month to northeast Portland’s Native American Youth and Family Center [NAYA] for the purpose of funding the organization’s “Ladder to Success” program, which is designed to provide community outreach to American Indian and Alaskan Native families.

“Even though we’re seeing record enrollments at OUS institutions…we’re not seeing that representation drifting down to groups that have traditionally not been in college,” said Stephanie Carnahan, OUS director of college access programs. “We want to make sure that underrepresented students and low-income students are in college to the same degree that other students who traditionally go to college and their peers are going.”

Of the $1.5 million grant that Oregon received from the U.S. Department of Education in August, $607,000 was funneled through OUS to the College Access Challenge Grant Program [CACGP]. Though 62 organizations applied for the grant, NAYA’s “Ladder to Success” program was one of only 12 pre-college preparation programs that CACGP decided to fund, Carnahan said.

“The overarching goal of the [CACGP] program is to increase the number of K–12 students who are prepared to enter and succeed in post-secondary education,” Carnahan said.

Although NAYA’s grant originally amounted to $75,000, the ad hoc committee in charge of selecting the grant recipients reduced the amount by 25 percent to more evenly distribute the funds among the selected organizations.

According to Carnahan, NAYA submitted an “outstanding application” to the committee—complete with clearly defined objectives and measureable outcomes—that articulated how it would employ the grant money to increase its capacity.

“It really stood out for us that the investment in NAYA during this one year of funding would result in years’ worth of improved services for students and their families,” Carnahan said.

According to Dean Azule, coordinator of PSU’s Native American Student Support Services program, the grant will be used to encourage Native American students to enroll in higher education.

“Native American students at the high school level…are usually facing many obstacles: financial, cultural, low academic scores, as well as getting the appropriate and accurate information it takes to get in to [post-secondary] school,” Azule said.

Native American students often hail from backgrounds of intergenerational poverty, which goes hand-in-hand with a lack of educational awareness and options, Carnahan said. If a student doesn’t know his or her options, they cannot pursue them.

This lack of upward mobility produces what Carnahan calls an “expectations gap”  and a “preparations gap.”  

Additionally, the family members of potential college students have never been to college and do not understand its value, according to Carnahan.

“They just don’t believe it’s necessary to go to college,” she said.

However, for those families that do understand the value of higher education, the process can be confusing.

“Unfortunately, we still see poverty playing a huge role in the degree to which students are inadequately prepared for college,” Carnahan said. “So if students don’t have adequate high school preparation, they’re not likely to enroll, and if they do enroll, they’re less likely to be successful.”

NAYA is fully responsible for how its grant money will be spent, provided it remains true to the proposals they spelled out in its application.

Since OUS’s role is to reimburse NAYA as it spends the grant money until mid-August 2011—when the grant is slated to expire—NAYA can begin using the funds immediately. The organization will match the funds with an additional $42,188 of its own money.

Tamara Henderson, achievement coach for NAYA, has offered some ideas on how NAYA could use the money to

expand “Ladder to Success” so as to serve its students in a “more holistic way.”

“We’ll be using some of the funds to actually have students attend college visits,” Henderson said.

In addition, she said the organization will be hosting several parents’ and family nights.  

“An important part of the college-going process is to make sure that parents are clued-in to the information needed to get their kids to college,” Henderson said. ?