Group Provides Rural Students One-on-One College Counseling

Last school year all seniors attending tiny Peñasco High school, and 45 percent of the 199 seniors at Taos High School received free one-on-one college counseling from the Taos, N.M.-based Bridges Project for Education. “Most of the students attending these two schools are minorities – Hispanic or Native American. And most come from homes where parents did not go to college, “ says Sue Goldberg, Bridges for Education’s college counselor. The local area high school counselors are overwhelmed and don’t have the time to counsel students one-on-one.

“The biggest challenges these students face is a lack of knowledge within their nuclear families about how to go to college and why it’s important, and, fear of not being able to afford it,” adds Goldberg.

Bridges Project for Education organized in 1997. The group received a W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Managing Information With Rural America (MIRA) grant in 1999 that aided it during its early years. Since 1997 Bridges Project has provided one-on-one counseling to 1,002 students and adults, and many more have attended its college-planning workshops. For more information on Bridges Project for Education, see its Web site at www.bridgesproject.net.