Help 100 Students Earn Their Diploma

Feb 15 - April 15 

It’s pretty easy to lose sight of what is important when life gets difficult.  For our adult students, they share common stories.  Whether it was drugs, jail time, fleeing their country, or even bullying - it was enough to put a pause on their goals, that includes finishing school. 

Partnering with the community in previous years, we have been able to remove a large barrier for the adult students in our High School Equivalency (HSE) program taking another shot at earning their diploma.  Although it costs about $400 to serve, instruct, and provide supplies for each student, we believe that keeping education free and accessible year-round and available at sites throughout the county greatly increases their chances of success so they can focus on learning, achieving goals, and supporting their families.

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The Building Hope Scholarship Drive impacts the lives of so many students in our community.  Elijah Bixby, a 2020 HSE graduate, had plans to finish school just like any other child, but in 7th grade all that changed when bullying pushed him onto another path...

Read Elijah's story HERE

“Just keep going at it. It can be really rough at times and feel almost impossible, you just have to give it your all no matter how difficult it may seem.”

- Elijah's advice for current and future LQ students

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Give a Gift that'll DOUBLE in Value!

The Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation hopes to inspire you to give by matching all gifts up to $40,000 received by April 15th. Our goal is to raise $40,000 to support 100 students, but if we accomplish that...we will also receive the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation's full match - which means we'll actually raise $80,000 and help 200 students instead!

Impact a life - Give today

***Want to be even more proactive?!  Start your own fundraising team of your friends and family and inspire them to support the Building Hope Scholarship Drive.  Click on the "I want to fundraise for this" button above!

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Facing the literacy crisis together, we can work to provide real solutions for adults that fall into these statistics impacting our community: 

• 21% of Stanislaus County adults over 25 years old don't have any schooling, their high school diploma, or the equivalent, making them unable to apply for college or the countless jobs that require it. (1) 
• One out of five adults, ages 16-65, in the U.S. (43 million people) have low literacy skills which means they are unable to "sufficiently complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences." (2) 
• California has the lowest adult literacy rate (76.9%) out of all the other states in the U.S. (3) 

Sources:

1. https://www.towncharts.com/California/Education/Stanislaus-County-CA-Education-data.html
2. https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp
3. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/us-literacy-rates-by-state

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For questions or additional info, contact:

Rochele Roura-Foster, 209-672-6642, RRFoster@lqslc.com

Yvonne Downs, 209-222-6049, YDowns@lqslc.com

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THANK YOU to the Mary Stuart Rogers Foundation and all of the individuals and organizations who have supported student goals through this scholarship drive.