The Beim Foundation recently gave an award of $5,000 to the Lao Assistance Center Youth Advancement Program!
The Beim Foundation is a multi-generational family foundation who honors the past while embracing the future.
They demonstrate leadership by investing in innovation, providing opportunities for those in need, creating healthy and sustainable communities through compassionate action and fostering personal and spiritual growth through giving.
The Beim Foundation expresses its values by making grants in the community in the areas of arts, environment, human services and education. The Lao Assistance Center is honored to have their support.
This grant will provide specific support for our Youth Advancement Program, which will provide leadership development, health, art and academic support activities to Lao youth. We believe academic achievement is essential to long-term community success and the Lao Assistance Center works with youth to ensure good grades and comprehension of the subject matter, with a focus on college-prep skills to ensure a greater percentage of Lao youth can attend college. We will also help youth identify and apply for college scholarships and financial aid.
LACM staff are inspired by the energy, enthusiasm and accomplishments of our future Lao leaders, but are also troubled many high potential youth leaders either drop out of high school or do not pursue post-secondary educational opportunities after graduating from high school. Much more needs to be done to support Lao youth, who struggle with Lao/American identity systems, limited resources and growing educational disparities.
Research conducted by the Asian American Justice Center in 2006 shows that educationally the Lao community lags behind seven other Twin City Asian American groups (i.e. Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Asian Indian, Filipino, Japanese, etc) and in comparison to all Twin City adults, are significantly behind, and the gap continues to grow. Just 17% of Lao adults have a 2-year college degree or better compared to 43% of all Twin City adults. Further, 42% of Lao adults have less than a high school education as compared to just 9% of all Twin City adults.
Our significant educational attainment disparities- high school dropouts and lack of college creates long-term and immediate strains on key services and impacts community growth.
The Lao Assistance Center would like to expand upon our existing leadership-focused activities and we believes this type of investment is greatly needed to narrow academic achievement disparities and ensure Lao youth have opportunities to realize their full potential as adults and contribute to our community development.
LACM staff have clearly heard from the community that youth educational advancement and adult employment are the highest priorities to address, and we are working together with you find solutions and build a future for our youth.
To that end, we will be working with at least 90 Lao Youth this year to provide them access to academic support, ACT prep class,6 college Tours, college application assistance, and developing Transition mentors to help our youth reach college. Stay tuned for more details, or contact our offices to find out how to get involved.
Again, we thank the Beim Foundation for their generous support and we look forward to working with you and all of our colleagues in the community.
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