La Colleges pay guaranteed income to health students

From Amy Elizabeth MooreCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Last November, Los Angeles student City Brenda Olazawa received an email notifying her that she was selected to participate in a guaranteed income pilot program. She will receive 12 monthly scholarships of $ 1,000 to spend as much as she wants.

“We’ll see if this is true or not,” she thought.

The Pilot Program for the Los Angeles Community region that builds exceptional possibilities for thriving students or enlargement provides monthly payments for one year to conditions Students from College in Community, specialty in the field of healthcare. Olazav’s skepticism disappeared when she received her first monthly scholarship in time for Thanksgiving 2024.

All over California, dozens Guaranteed income programs provide participants with monthly scholarships. But only a few reach students. Even less reach students in the community.

In Santa ClaraA pilot program provides a monthly scholarship of $ 1,200 for two years to non -age students between the ages of 16 and 20. In another pilot program, some former foster youths, ex -deprived of deprived people and recipients of Calworks at 10 California Community Colleges, began to receive a monthly guaranteed income in March 2024. HireS

Boost is unique because it is aimed at healthcare students as part of the effort to deal with the chronic nurse in California shortageS The California Colleges in the Community offer academic roads to jobs in healthcare, but many of the nurses programs in the Los Angeles Community area have part of The highest numbers of tingling in the country. The program also provides students scholarships during the critical period after completing their degrees and moving on to employment.

Guaranteed income helps students focus on program psychology

Although Olazawa was skeptical when she heard about the program, she decided: “Why not apply?”

The money made a difference. Now Olazawa pays her bills on time, bringing her children to eat and buy her son the clothes and shoes he needs. She has more time to study, as in her courses and is on the roller of honor.

Olazawa found her passion to take care of adult adults during the pandemic. It was fascinated by how the body and mind function after accidents or with the age of people. But after a working injury in 2021 aside, she realized that she had to find a new career. Her therapist offered to return to school.

Olazawa registered for a psychology class at Los Angeles City College, although the semester had already begun. She loved the class and decided to continue. She registers for a complete course of the course and has taken lessons in sociology, psychology and humanities.

A decade earlier, Olazawa won her associate degree in criminal justice as a lonely parent of a baby and a young child. Now she returned to school full -time as a lonely parent of two teenagers.

She worked on campus as a student employee and was driving for Uber Eats or Lyft at night. She was running, but it was a fight.

“Just as a single mother, it’s just prevailing financial needs all the time,” she said.

After her first payment in November, Olazawa saved some money when she transferred Los Angeles to the state in the fall. The extra $ 1,000 a month gives her more time to study and be with her children. It has less financial stress and can be scattered for ice cream for your children or breakfast on a late night.

She graduated from June 10 with four associated degrees in psychology, sociology, social and behavioral science and liberal arts. She will transfer to Cal State Los Angeles to study psychology and plan to pursue a master’s degree in social work.

When Olazawa started college for the second time at the age of 37, her children were skeptical that she would persevere.

“But I always told my children, it doesn’t matter how old you are, as long as you want to do something, move on and do it,” she said.

Guaranteed income recipients plan to introduce health fields

The pilot includes 251 students at East Los Angeles College, Los Angeles Southwest College, Los Angeles City College and Los Angeles Commercial College at Los Angeles Municipal College, which serves about 250,000 students.

About half of the college community students reports on or below the poverty level, according to Kelly King, chief advocate in the Los Angeles Community area and CEO of the Boost area Foundation. The monthly scholarship is not tied to the recorded units or assessments, and students choose how they spend money, whether on diapers, groceries, repairing cars or for debt repayment.

While few guaranteed income programs are aimed at community students, the need is available. More than two -thirds of nearly 67,000 students in California in the Community have examined the struggle to meet their basic needs, according to 2023. RealCollege studyS

The Boost program studies two groups: 251 healthcare and psychology students who receive a monthly income and a 370 control group who do not receive scholarships.

The monthly amount is not intended to cover the completely high costs of living in LA, but to help participants relieve financial stressors.

Participants in other income studies guaranteed by the community who receive a monthly scholarship of $ 1,000 report more levels of stress, less missed dishes and the ability to plan forward, reduce their duty or upgrade their homes, King said.

Researchers At the University of Pennsylvania, quote another pilot program for guaranteed income for Students in the Santa Fe CommunityS They found that giving students $ 400 a month in a year has led to positive results. At the end of the pilot program, more recipients were hired, thought they could withstand an emergency situation of $ 400, spent more time with their children and managed to save more. Most of the participants said the money had gone to manage the household and buying food, according to the report.

Higher education researchers and politicians often evaluate the value of guaranteed income regarding progress to economic mobility. But Santa Fe’s study revealed more non -material benefits.

Participants have described the pursuit of higher education for reasons other than workplace training, said Amy Castro, a leading researcher for the amplification study. “These students said,” I pursue a higher education to be someone who has a degree and I want to learn, because it has value for me and dignity for me and this is the way I want to honor my family, “she said.

The breakdown of guaranteed basic income from academic requirements allows researchers to continue to monitor the effects of guaranteed income on community students during periods when they cannot be recorded due to life events, challenges or academic indentations. “(This) provides a truly captivating window in the real life and the progression of our students,” King said.

The Boost pilot provides researchers with the first of its kind, a randomized, controlled higher education test on this scale, King said. As participants share a common goal – healthcare employment – researchers can study the impact of guaranteed income on progress to a specific result.

Community students may exceed the cost of California University or California State University, especially with high costs for residential regions such as LA County, King said. California students in the community receive less state aid than UC and Cal State students. And throughout the country the college costs have increases exponentially Over the last three decades.

Private donors provided nearly $ 4 million needed to implement the pilot program. The Shiroka Foundation gave nearly $ 3.2 million, and the LA Community College Foundation contributed nearly $ 870,000 from its young adult fund.

The initial reinforcing success guides grants to relieve disasters in LA Hey

Inform in the research and success of guaranteed income pilot programs, the Los Angeles Community Foundation will offer current financial payments to a small group of students who have lost housing for a long time or experience significant difficulties due to January 2025 FiresS

The hope is to help students recover from the losses inflicted by wild fires and to continue their educational path. Grant provides $ 1,000 per month for 12 months to 24 conditions Students. The Foundation has raised over $ 3 million in private donations for disaster relief that will finance the monthly payments to Los Angeles students, as well as go to disaster assistance programs at Glendale and Pasadena Community Colleges, according to King.

The Boost pilot program combines strategies to help students continue to follow their education and a year of guaranteed monthly income. King said the foundation has applied this formula for long -term disaster financing to ask how two types of grants can achieve two types of goals: the support of students in their education through the disaster and to make sure that their future educational or career goals are not violated.

King then plans to set up a guide for other colleges to launch such programs. It also aims to provide funds for future guaranteed income programs for healthcare students, as well as for children raising children while attending a college in the Community.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.