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North Mecklenburg High School graduate Reon McGee plans on studying nursing at UNC Chapel Hill.

Hazel Reon

Dream

Team by Grace Kennedy

carolina youTh coaliTion connecTs TalenT wiTh opporTuniTy

Research shows that higher education means better pay, lower unemployment rates, and greater access to healthcare. Depending on factors beyond their control, like family income and zip code, many high school students face substantial barriers to getting a degree. But that doesn’t stop them, or their families, from holding onto the dream of higher education.

Carolina Youth Coalition (CYC) believes every dream needs a team, and like any great team, they have stats to back up their work. CYC’s Class of 2020 Fellows earned acceptances into 64 universities and redeemed $3.2 million in scholarships and grants. The majority are first-generation college students, and 55 percent are attending debt-free.

And CYC keeps growing. “Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, we were able to grow our program from 75 Fellows in the fall to 110 this spring,” says CYC Executive Director Aaron Randolph. They are aiming for 150 Fellows this fall.

The big questions

How does CYC do it? The best people to answer this question are the Fellows themselves. Class of 2020 North Mecklenburg High graduates Hazel Whyte and Reon McGee just completed their freshmen years at UNC Chapel Hill. They both have full scholarships and credit CYC with helping them get where they are today.

When McGee became a CYC Fellow in high school, she was asking herself the “big questions” as she calls them: what do you want to become, where do you want to go to college, how will you get there? “CYC helped me answer questions that I wasn’t able to answer myself, being a first-generation college student,” says McGee, who plans to become a nurse practitioner.

CYC provides Fellows with workshops (with transportation provided) covering career exploration, ACT prep, financial aid, and more. They also host college tours (McGee visited Johns Hopkins and Howard, among others) and provide The Youth Union, where Fellows can study or meet with mentors.

“They helped us build strong essays so we would stand out among our peers,” says McGee. “They helped us get ready to go to campus and prepared us to know what to expect.”

Thanks to a strong team—her parents and sisters who always made sure she was putting in the work and supported the decisions that led to her success; and the CYC staff that guided her through those Big Questions—McGee’s dream of being a nurse practitioner is on track to becoming a reality.

Following the playbook

Like McGee, Hazel Whyte also plans to enter the medical field. She had been leaning toward becoming a lawyer, but the impact of COVID-19 motivated her to pursue medicine. She plans to become a psychiatrist or an OB/GYN. She feels strongly that minorities need greater representation in the medical field. She’s also seen the research—Black women are three times more likely to die while pregnant or within a year of pregnancy compared to white women—and she wants to do something about it.

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Reon McGee just completed her freshman year at UNC Chapel Hill.

CYC connected Whyte with a mentor who helped her through the application process. “They essentially give you a playbook to ensure you have success,” says Whyte. But it’s a supportive, rather than competitive, environment. “The whole atmosphere feels like a family. Everyone genuinely wants to help each other.”

Whyte credits her mother and James Rivers, her high school math teacher, as fellow members of her dream team. “My mother allowed me to make my own decisions while also guiding me,” she says. Mr. Rivers pushed Whyte to always do her best, and encouraged her to apply to UNC before she had considered it.

Join the team

“Talent is distributed equally throughout our communities, but the opportunity is not,” says CYC Executive Director Randolph. You can provide life-changing opportunities by donating to CYC, mentoring a Fellow, or referring qualifying students to apply to the Fellows program. Visit www.carolinayouth.org to learn how you can be part of a dream team.