RenaIssance Scholars Graduates Defy Odds on Road to Success

Did you know about 3-4% of former foster youth earn a degree?

In this spotlight, I was invited to reflect on pieces of my past and the difficulties in reaching graduation. The piece dually spotlights fellow graduates while spotlighting the organization that supported our undergraduate trajectory.

Renaissance Scholars is a program on campus that helps former foster youth and emancipated youth in achieving graduation through scholarship and resource support, including workshops, collaborative partnership with local child welfare organizations and with the hosting university.

The article linked below highlights 4 stories, including my own, during our season of college graduation.

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What many people don’t know is that my father died my last semester of college. I remember taking graduation photos, completely numb, completely dissociated - the skinniest I’ve ever been. And not being able to feel the joy I was performing. It was interesting to discuss my past, speaking truth but ill of my father, during my season of graduation when I was grieving him. It felt quite dystopian. For weeks I carried his urn in the passenger seat, because I didn’t know what else to do. I was sort of frozen, but somehow it felt it important that he be there -even if he couldn’t be there my whole life. So although the excerpt written about my past in the article is accurate, it does not communicate the trance and blur I was in at the time.

Excerpt:

Speaking Truth to Power

Athena Garcia-Gunn learned to be an advocate out of the need to survive a childhood fraught with abuse, neglect and fear.

When she turns her tassel at commencement Sunday, June 10, the graduating senior majoring in political science, will leave campus armed with the knowledge that she can make a difference far beyond herself.

First she had to get there.

Garcia-Gunn grew up mainly in Inglewood and Lennox. When Garcia-Gunn was seven, her mom died in childbirth, leaving her father to raise her and three younger siblings. Her dad was a drug dealer who left Garcia-Gunn and her siblings at home by themselves for long stretches. There was physical abuse. At age 8, she was put into foster care for three months, but after her dad took court-mandated parenting classes, she and her siblings were returned to him.

"We were sleeping on dirt floors in garages. We weren't eating food," she says. "From sixth to ninth grade, I was basically not going to school. I would show up once every two weeks to keep the social workers at bay."

She was sexually assaulted by men in her neighborhood. Garcia-Gunn made anonymous reports to child protective services. A social worker showed up unexpectedly to the home on her father's birthday. Her dad was caught doing drugs and the children were removed and placed in foster care.

"After that, I made sure we never went back," she says. "I wrote letters to the judges about my father. I was making sure my voice was always included."

Garcia-Gunn began taking extra classes to get caught up with her 10th-grade classmates. She also began to deal with her newly diagnosed PTSD. She did intensive therapy several times a week.

"Before foster care, I was shut down," she says. "I was like a person made of stone. But as soon as I entered foster care, I collapsed. I stopped being this closed person because I didn't have to be in that survival mode."

At age 19, Garcia-Gunn was placed in her last foster home. That foster mom became her adoptive mother when Garcia-Gun was 20.

Her mom encouraged her to go to college. She attended Pasadena City College where her work around foster care advocacy took flight. Garcia-Gunn overhead someone talking about an internship program for foster youth and decided to apply. She interned in Congresswoman Karen Bass' office in Washington D.C.

"I had never been out of state," she says. "I was on my own for the first time. It was a real deep dive, like getting thrown into the ocean."

Garcia-Gunn's internship required her to write policy recommendations to change foster care law. She wrote about counties not communicating with each other when siblings get separated and advocated to expand adoptions for LGBT couples. She also worked for her college's program for foster youth.

After transferring to Cal Poly Pomona, she continued her advocacy work as the Associated Students Incorporated's first civic engagement officer. She co-wrote a resolution calling for the protection of Title IX. She also works as a consultant for the Department of Health and Human Services to assist with foster care curriculum for therapists.

She applied to Renaissance Scholars in her senior year, glad to find others on campus who came from similar circumstances, she says.

The aspiring attorney hopes to expand her advocacy work beyond foster care in the future.

"The big thing that helped me succeed was dealing with my traumas," she says. "Push yourself to grow emotionally and mentally. Emotional intelligence is key. When you have high emotional intelligence, everything unlocks itself."

Originally published: June 07, 2018 | Melanie Johnson | cpp.edu/news