Thirty-five years ago Ernesto Robles, a California educator, and San Antonio Archbishop Patricio Flores founded the Hispanic Scholarship Fund because they believed that education would be critical to the success not only of Hispanic Americans, but also to the ongoing success of America.
Today, HSF is the nation’s leading organization that supports Hispanic higher education, providing high school outreach programs, scholarships, on-campus support, career building tools, and alumni networking programs for students across the country. Over the years we have awarded approximately $300 million in scholarships to more than 50,000 students in need. Two-thirds of these students were the first in their families to go to college.
For the 2009–2010 academic year, we gave close to $29 million in scholarship dollars to approximately 4,500 deserving Latino students. These awards have helped high-achieving students attend nearly 2,000 of the nation’s diverse and academically-rigorous colleges and universities.
Our success stems from a research-based approach to programming that has evolved over the years to reflect the changing dynamics and issues affecting the nation’s Hispanic communities. We routinely monitor every HSF program to ensure they continue to deliver results.
This approach also provided the foundation for our partnership with the Ad Council to create “Their Tomorrow Depends on Your Words Today,” a campaign and a website which will provide families with in-depth information about preparing and paying for college. The campaign will be in full swing in our next fiscal year. To learn more, visit www.yourwordstoday.org.