Academic, College, and Career Exposure for Student Success (ACCESS) Program
ACCESS promotes a love for learning with the intent of encouraging students to give back to their communities and seek more out of life.
Our collaborative approach leverages support from educational partners, corporate partners, and the general community.
To ensure success, we recruit students into the ACCESS program early in the tenth grade. ACCESS students receive personal and academic skill development, academic and career-related field trips, and mentoring.
Our Saturday workshops are a careful balance of academic enrichment and social exposure as staff coupled with community and business leaders come together to support our students. Through our approach, students develop the needed skills that enable them to excel in their immediate and future endeavors.
Since the organization was founded in 2000, more than 150 students have graduated from the ACCESS program. Upon high school graduation, students become eligible to participate in our scholarship program. Depending on the academic performance, financial need, and the college or university they are attending, Foundation students will receive up to $6,500 per year per student.
BALF helps students and their families ensure that they have the money to attend the college of their choice. BALF does this in three ways:
- Enable students to win scholarships. Through our ACCESS program, we enable students to perform at high levels, academically and in their school communities. These high levels of academic and community performance help our students apply for and win scholarships. A major objective of our programs is help students become “magnets” for scholarship money. We help you identify and apply for these funds.
- Finding additional scholarships. Second, BALF has knowledgeable staff who also seek additional scholarship funding on behalf of our students. There is considerable competition for these scholarship funds but BALF staff usually secure some funding for some of our students.
- BALF will fill the remaining gap. Finally, for some, there may still be a gap between what it costs to go to a particular college and what has been secured by the student and BALF. In these cases, BALF covers this gap up to $6,500 from its own funds to ensure the student can afford to attend that college.
Our goal is to ensure that every BALF student has the funding that it takes to go to their chosen college. We expect that many students, with BALF support, will get direct scholarships in their names that cover all their costs. For these students, additional funding is not needed and BALF can use our funds to help other students. As you would expect, BALF does not provide funding to a student that goes above what it costs for them to attend college.
In summary, BALF helps students and their families secure college funding. It's a partnership and it provides our students peace of mind in knowing that they can attend the college of their choice.
Visit Our Students to learn more about our ACCESS students and where graduates are now obtaining their higher education.
