Mission Promise Neighborhood Partner Interview Series (Part 3): Mission Graduates
Earlier in the Spring, CPNN met up with three of Mission Promise Neighborhood’s 15 partners: Tandem, Partners in Early Learning, Jamestown Community Center, and Mission Graduates. In our interviews with each organization, we learned why their community-rooted services are so vital to the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN) model, how they work across different community partners to maximize their reach, and why collaboration is key for them.
Below is our final interview with Mission Graduates.
A nonprofit established in 1972 in San Francisco’s Mission District, Mission Graduates asserts college education as a must for every child through a wide range of programs that help chart a path to higher education. They continue to impact over 5,000 children, youth, and families annually, and emphasize college as a means to success.
In our conversation with Senior Director of College and Career Programming, Catherine Marroquin, and Director of High School Programs, Jill Marinelli, they share how their partnership with MPN (Mission Promise Neighborhood) has been transformative as they shift the culture together around higher education a path full of support and guidance no matter the journey.
Interviewer: Why is your work vital to the Mission District and its community?
Catherine Marroquin: We want to make college an expectation, not an exception in our community. We serve about 77% Latino students, and many of our staff have either come through the SFUSD system, gone to college, and are now working in community, or have very similar backgrounds to the community that we serve.
The change that we really want to make in terms of education is really trying to get to place where our community is not just getting by, but truly thriving. That is one of the vital pieces of the work that we do: from getting students into college or into different career paths, we do our best to ensure they're thriving in whatever field or career that they're choosing. That often means that we are supporting them post-high school graduation.
Jill Marinelli: There's been so much gentrification, specifically in the Mission. The whole city is a very expensive place to live in. Supporting our students in accessing the careers that they are excited about and feel good about will allow them to stay in their community, give back to their community, and keep living in San Francisco, which is their home.
“We want to make college an expectation, not an exception — and we’ll walk with our students every step of the way, no matter the path they take.”
Interviewer: How does your organization contribute to the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN)?
Jill: We contribute in a really big way because there are not a lot of high school-to-college partners. So we're really the ones supporting the students through high school and college or post-secondary trades. There are a lot of organizations supporting the younger students, from early education to elementary, and then we take over. We're the core partner supporting the older students on their trajectory.
Catherine: We're one of two organizations that work with this particular age group. And maybe the only ones that work with them beyond high school.
Interviewer: Which partnerships within the network complement or maximize your work?
Jill: Especially at John O'Connell High School, we work closely with the MPN staff. There's a family success coach who has been there for many years, and we constantly refer families to him for support with the housing lotteries in San Francisco, the DAHLIA system, and he helps families apply to that.
It's also currently tax season. So that's a big piece of work MEDA does: we're able to refer families to him to get their taxes done, to get support, and get ITIN numbers, which is really important for our students to apply to financial aid.
We also work with the YMCA at John O’ Connell. We'll refer students to after-school programs if they're looking to get involved in sticking around after class and doing more enrichment activities.
Interviewer: How does collaboration with MPN partners create more impact for Mission families?
Catherine: I think the collaboration is really great when we can come in as a community and kind of make all these connections.
When you look at the span of the work that we do from kindergarten to career, the biggest impact is where the resources are: early childhood education and the younger groups. It's telling when the K-8 programming has a good list of partners, and then you look at post-secondary and it's very short. That highlights that the work we do is important, because there isn't really anyone else carrying that work as much as Mission Graduates is. There's a lot of impact that happens with our parent partner program, the way the parent partner program is connected to the parents and to the school governance community. That work is really foundational and critical.
I would love to see more connections, more partnerships, and more funding for the work that we do so that we can expand that work and make a bigger impact in our community.
Jill: I think MPN is doing a great job with the younger students and that's really meeting that moment of supporting them and getting to grade level with their writing and their math, and also building the college-going culture so that when they get to us, they are eligible for these systems and they can navigate them.
Interviewer: What is one story that has motivated your continued work with Mission graduates? (Note: key information has been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned in the stories)
Catherine: We had a student in one of our earlier cohorts when we started College Connect. As a high school student, he was a really amazing kid, and his family had immigrated from El Salvador.
The only way that he was going to be able to go to college was to receive a lot of scholarships. And this kid was so motivated, even while also working and doing construction with his family. He was so active in the program, coming in all the time. Every time I approached him saying: ‘there's a scholarship opportunity. You got to do it’, he was ready.
In the end, he received so many scholarships, was able to go to school without any debt, and got his degree. This allowed him to take over his family's construction business. One time he came to tell me he received an award for being one of the fastest-growing businesses. And he now gives to our organization’s College Connect program. When he started donating to us, it was like a full-circle moment. I'm just so proud of him. It really built a path before a path was even there in a lot of ways.
Jill: We had a student graduate in 2020, which was a pretty tough year to graduate. He was really smart kid who got really good grades, but his family was homeless for most of his high school years. He lived in a car with his mom and his two little brothers, and he worked trying to support them.
“He built a path before a path was even there — and now he’s giving back so others can do the same.”
In his senior year, they finally got into housing, but it was far from the cit, across the bridge. He still finished most of his senior year before the pandemic hit, coming into school, applying for a ton of scholarships, and receiving a handful, including the Mission Promise Neighborhood Scholarship, which is a very grassroots endeavor between MPN and Mission Graduates. He wanted to go to college, but he just had all this family pressure of supporting his mom and siblings. While he was accepted to the University, he struggled and ended taking some time off. But he stayed in touch with me, went back to City College and continues to take classes there. He also actually just got hired at our local high school, so I see him every day now. It's great to witness how he is building relationships with students, mentoring them and providing safety that way. Every day, he promises ‘I'm still going to get my degree, I still want to be a social worker’. He's still working on that path, even though he's had this nontraditional journey. And I think that's really part of the key work– not everyone has this straight line. Everyone has their different paths, and our doors are always open to students. If they take a break, if they pause programming, they can come back. To see that they're still on their path, and that they're still working towards their goal means that what we’re doing is working.