Alumni Bring 'H.O.P.E' to Howard Students

In September of 2010 Jeffery Chance and Michelle Nealy, Howard University School of Business alumni, both agreed: household incomes should not dictate African American college retention rates and they were going to do something about it. The alumni, fresh out of college, started the Helping Others Pursue Education, H.O.P.E Scholarship Initiative, a need-based-financial aid foundation that awards $1000 scholarships to minority students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

"Our purpose in starting the H.O.P.E initiative was to fill a financial gap," said Chance, director of the program. "Though there are merit based scholarships, there is also a great need for need based scholarships. But HBCU's don't always have the finances to award them."

Chance and his Assistant Director Nealy aimed to make quality education affordable to deserving students. They started planning with little money and a small group of friends.

"When they first told me about it, they described it as like a dream to give back," said Teneasha Pierson, current Marketing Director of H.O.P.E. and one of the original Howard members of the scholarship team. Pierson said that she did not hesitate to help out since her own college experience was one of the most "financially taxing, hazing times" of her life. "A lot of recent graduates want to wait until they arrive to start giving back, but we realized that this initiative was important to do now,"she said.

Since last year, the foundation has become an incorporated organization with an official website (thehopescholarship.com). The H.O.P.E team has also organized several fundraising events and held three informational twitter chats with distinguished guests such as Dr. Walter Kimbrough, president of Philander Smith College, a HBCU in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The H.O.P.E. Initiative blog found at http://thehopescholarship.wordpress.com/h-o-p-e-blog/has received over 3,000 hits. Alumni, professors, college presidents, and other mentors from HBCUs as well as majority institutions, post college related articles every Monday on subjects like picking a major, balancing school and work, finding a mentor, making friends, finding inspiration and more. In the future, H.O.P.E plans to continue expanding to include other HBCUs and to use the H.O.P.E website as a central location for students looking for scholarships. H.O.P.E will announce its first $1000 scholarship recipient, a Howard Student, in the upcoming weeks.

Chance said that the H.O.P.E initiative is not about personal glory, but about building a generation of philanthropists. "When we talk about making sure our HBCUs are here another hundred years and more, we can't ensure that if we don't have alumni contributing. We can't wait until we reach success. The H.O.P.E initiative became successful by simply giving one and two dollar donations and that has translated into a thousand dollar scholarship."

Friday, Sept. 23, the H.O.P.E Scholarship Initiative celebrated their one year anniversary at Tabaq Bistro on U Street.