The 4-H Club has always been devoted to youth development.  But a specialized program, Juntos 4-H that launched in 2015, is preparing Latino students in eighth to twelfth grades, in collaboration with their parents, to apply for and gain acceptance into college.  Juntos means “together” in Spanish, and that name was selected because the program connects Latino youth and their families with mentors and colleges.

One of its primary goals is for the 4-H Club to develop more effective relationships with the Latino community.  The program launched at North Carolina State University in 2007 and morphed into Juntos 4-H in 2015.

Between 2015 and 2017, it enrolled 400 students from Texas, New York and Florida (though it operates in many other states including California, Arizona and Illinois).  A survey of those students revealed that 87 percent of participants felt they belonged in school, and 91 percent of them saw their grades improve.

Jennifer Sirangelo, president and CEO of the National 4-H Council, has said, “Research shows that Latino youth are at the greatest risk of dropping out of schools between the ninth and tenth grades.”  The program is sponsored by the National 4-H Council and was supported by a $1.5 million grant from the New York Life Foundation.

Multiple Strategies

Juntos 4-H employs several strategies including a week-long or weekend summer workshop on a college campus, one-on-one mentoring, and workshops on such topics as financial aid for both students and their parents.  Most first-generation Latino parents, who aren’t college graduates, can become overwhelmed by the complexity of applying for financial aid and filling out college applications.

Lupita Fabregas, coordinator of Juntos 4-H in California, explained that “You can’t achieve a full potential without a better education, and that’s what we want to do in 4-H.  First, they have to graduate college and then pursue a career.”

But in California the need to instill a desire for post-high school education is sorely needed.  Fabregas notes that in California 52 percent of students attending K-12 public schools are Latino, 35 percent of them are enrolled in two or four-year colleges, but only 15 percent of Latinos aged 25 to 29 have a bachelor’s degree according to the Pew Research Center in 2016.

Naming it Juntos is apt because most Latino’s lives revolve around the family.  “Latino communities are family-oriented, and everything becomes a family issue,” she said.

Juntos consists of three major strategies: workshops for students from eighth grade through high school that focus on higher education in all of its details including how to write an essay for college, what classes to take in high school to succeed in college and the necessity to add community service to round out one’s resume.  The workshops serve as a “conversation with a facilitator and between parents and kids, so they know exactly what it will take for them to attend the university or community college,” she said.

During the summer, students attend a one-week academy in North Carolina or weekend academy in California on a university campus.  Students sleep in dorms, meet with professors and get exposed to college life.  The summer residency “breaks barriers of the fear of being in an unknown environment,” explained Fabregas, a native of Mexico, who came to the U.S. at age 44, and is based in Davies, California.

In addition, students are assigned a one-on-one coach or mentor who can be a high school teacher, a college student with experience, or parents who are college graduates and savvy about college.  The mentors follow-up and often collaborate with students from eighth grade until they graduate from high school.

Fabregas attributes the program’s success of 90 percent positive feedback to “accountability.  You are part of a group, and the group supports you.”  In essence, she says Juntos 4-H is trying to change a culture, to inculcate to Latinos that there are three secrets to success: education, education, education.

Success Story

Exemplifying its success is Carlos Pena-Magos, a 17-year-old senior who attends St. Stephens High School in Hickory, N.C.  Pena-Magos had been invited with his parents to a session that explained what Juntos 4-H sets out to accomplish.  His teacher explained that it involved attending workshops that help students learn the ins and outs of how to apply for college and invited speakers to discuss getting into college.

Since Pena-Magos parents hadn’t graduated from college, they attended the meeting with him.  Pena-Magos liked what he heard and opted to participate in Juntos 4-H.

At the end of his junior year, he spent a week at the Juntos Summer Academy, which took place at the North Carolina State University campus.   He lived in the dorm and attended a college fair at the college.  The week spent on campus inspired him and whetted his appetite for gaining entry into a college.

The workshops encouraged him to stretch his aspirations and not settle for attending the local community college in Hickory.  The summer academy taught him how to navigate financial aid forms and decipher college’s often-complex applications.

About financial aid, he learned his parents needed to show their tax forms from the previous year, how to navigate the FAFSA (Federal student aid) website and how state universities would be less expensive than out of state colleges.  He also learned that he needed to improve his ACT and SAT scores to heighten his chances of getting into a good college.

Supported by the skills taught at the Juntos’ workshops on how to apply to college, he has been accepted by Western Carolina University.  His goal is to become a physical therapist and eventually earn a master’s degree.

“It was beneficial for me and my parents.  We didn’t know what steps to take to become a college student.  This program is like a steppingstone in the foundation of what you should do to become a college freshman,” Pena-Magos stated.

Fabregas would like to see Juntos 4-H do an even better job in the future of helping Latino students thrive in college once they’re accepted.  “The Latino population is going to be looking for jobs in the next 10 to 20 years.  If we don’t educate this population, who is going to do this work?” she wonders. •