Walter Emanuel Jones Steps up for STEPWITHUS.ORG

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Actor Walter E Jones has officially STEPPED up to help the kids in Nativity. Walter has stated “I would love to do whatever I can to improve the dropout rate at these schools.

Most commonly known as the original Black Power Ranger Zack Taylor

More information on STEPWITHUS.ORG

STEP THE HISTORY

From Ron Crimins, Founder of STEP

In 1999, I started an informal organization called Pathfinders (Currently Success Through Education Program). The purpose of the Pathfinders was to find motivational speakers for the students at Nativity Catholic School located in South-Central Los Angeles. Our speakers would visit each grade from K to 8^th, their talks emphasizing the rewards of hard work, determination and getting a good education. The speakers have included attorneys, CPAs, dentists and business executives. Our most renowned speakers where Rosario Marin, the 41^St Treasurer of the United States, Rory Bruer, President of Sony Distribution (worldwide), Gabrielle Chamberlin, Senior VP (North America), Buena Vista/Disney.

In 2000, we discovered the plight of some of our 8^Th grade graduates: Those students who couldn’t afford to go to Catholic High Schools were relegated to one of the local public schools. Manual Arts High School is a good example of the quality of these schools, having only 37% of students from the class of 2008 graduating on time and only 13% of sophomores are on track to qualify for admission to local colleges. Whereas, the local Catholic High Schools have a dropout rate of less than 5% and 95% go on to college. Furthermore, the public schools in question have reputations of being cesspools of drugs, gangs and violence.

Consequently, in the year 2000, we expanded the objectives of Pathfinders to include granting scholarships to attend Catholic High Schools. The only requirements for our graduating students are financial need and a letter of acceptances from the student’s school of choice. The average scholarship is $1,500 per year.

In 2005 Pathfinders was incorporated as Success Through Education, Inc. (STEP).

Since 2000, we have given out over $800,000 dollars in scholarships.

Students who have been sponsored by STEP attend such universities as USC, UCLA Berkeley, Loyola Marymount, and Mt. St. Mary’s College. Every student who has been sponsored by STEP and has graduated from high school has gone on to college.

The Board