Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Precious Awopetu. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Precious, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, let’s start with a hypothetical – what would you change about the educational system?

College is one of the best life experiences that one can have. I met lifelong friends, developed skills and traits, and found a career. As a first-generation college student, I also made a lot of mistakes throughout my journey. At TFOU we use our personal experiences and resources in order to make college accessible for students in underserved communities. We believe that everyone that wants to go to college should be able to. Unfortunately, college has become so expensive that students now have to question if post-secondary education is necessary or worth it.

Both my business partner and I were non-traditional college students and have nontraditional careers. I had the opportunity to explore majors and take an extra year of courses. Not everyone who attends college will have that opportunity. We believe that one of the best ways to prepare students for college and a fulfilling career is to expose them to different careers and young professionals who are currently in their field. This opportunity will allow high school students to begin formulating their own interests in a major and career. Picking a major and deciding on a career is one of the most important life decisions a young person can make.

In the upcoming school year, we plan to partner with Kansas City’s neighboring high schools to organize a career summit. We plan to bring 6 or more young minority professionals in different career fields to discuss their background, experience, adversity, and success throughout their journey. We intend for this to be interactive to allow students to ask as many questions to the panelists.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The Future of Us is a nonprofit scholarship organization. We have been serving our community for 5 years and have rewarded over 10 students with scholarships and ACT test prep. My business partner and I started TFOU after we identified the lack of collegiate opportunities and support from our high school compared to more affluent high schools. We want to strengthen our community and future scholars by investing our time, experience and resources. We believe that every student should have the opportunity to pursue their academic and career goals regardless of upbringing. We plan to continue to offering scholarships each year and organize community events for our youth. We’re also extremely proud of our community for the support that we’ve received in the past few years. TFOU has also partnered with other community members to facilitate and create their own scholarships.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Being a nonprofit, we’re funded almost exclusively by community donations. I think sharing our perspective went a long way with donors. Having graduated from Ruskin High School we were able to paint a clear picture of the economic challenges students face and some of the drastic differences from nearby communities. We were able to draw people in with the extremes: Ruskin High School and the surrounding community being 15 minutes away from two of the wealthiest school districts in their states; that is, Lee’s Summit R-7 School District to the east and Blue Valley Unified School District 229 to the west. But we were also able to capture the subtleties in the college decision as a whole: what success means and how attainable a higher education seems. I think there was a level of trust in us as people from the community trying to pour back into it vs someone outside the community coming to “rescue.” And the other thing that I think helped was our attitude toward the standard scholarship application process and how black and white it can be using test scores and transcripts to drive decision making; investing in the paper instead of the people. Donors gravitated towards the freshness of building connections with students especially in times where there are many social disconnects. Our non-traditional process of speaking to students, getting to know them, interviewing them and learning about them to drive our decision making was a big differentiating factor for us.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

We serve students and the best way thus far has been going into schools and speaking to them. That’s where we see our highest application rates. Most times we can relate on a level that many other scholarship organizations can’t. As for finding donors, surprisingly written media has done pretty well for us. I think that people who are actively looking to make a difference pay attention to outlets where they can find new opportunities to do so.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thefouscholarship.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefouscholarship/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thefouscholarship
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/69921681/

Image Credits
Paul Versluis, Lifestyle Publications