By Nicole Lynn Lewis and Vinice Davis, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, July 13, 2021
When Ariel Ventura-Lazo’s son was born, he had a lot on his mind. Would he be a good father? Would he be able to support his young family as the bills piled up?
He had tried community college while working full time shortly after graduating from high school, but he didn’t do well and figured college wasn’t for him. Now that he was a father, he realized his job as a cash vault teller wouldn’t pay the bills and that he would need to return to college to build a better life for his family. But managing the competing demands of work, school, and parenting seemed impossible.
Student parents like Ventura-Lazo, often sidelined as a niche population with the attention and investment to match, sit at the frayed seams of the many big challenges philanthropy aims to address — economic mobility, educational equity, and racial justice.
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