Every year, Community Coalition's youth program, South Central Youth Empowered through Action (SCYEA) takes about 30 local high school students to the Bay Area to visit universities and take a special Black Panther tour.

For many South L.A. youth, this is a life-altering trip. Many have never been out of their communities, most have never stepped foot on a college campus. Working-class black and brown youth from communities like South LA face tremendous odds to get to college: South LA has some of the worst-performing high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District--these are schools that are overcrowded, have limited college counseling, and are just now implementing mandatory A-G requirements. South LA youth face violence, the threat of gangs, drugs and other street ills that other youth from more privileged sectors do not encounter. For many of our youth, these things have become so normalized in their lives that they think that they are not meant to go to college.

For almost 15 years, SCYEA has been working to beat those odds by providing leadership development, academic support, and political education to working-class black and brown youth.

This year, seven youth were able to document the trip to the Bay Area and talk about what college means to them, what student activism means to them and they share what the barriers they face on a day-to-day basis to graduate from high school and try to go to college.

Please visit http://blog.cocosouthla.org to meet our great youth.