By Devonte Barr, Columnist
May is known for a lot of things — Star Wars, Cinco de Mayo, the end of the school year. But on a quiet Monday morning at El Camino College, a different kind of milestone was taking shape — one that rarely gets the same attention.
You see, back in the late 1980s, May became National Foster Care Month — a recognition of a community that, despite affecting hundreds of thousands across the country, still often goes unseen. The Foster Youth Student Success Program (FYSS) hosted a resource table event to support current and former foster youth navigating college. At first take, it looked like any other campus outreach effort — tables, flyers, conversations. But the deeper story wasn’t in the setup but rather in the people it was built for.
As a former foster youth myself, I came in with a different question than most: What gets in the way of their success?
When I asked specialist Brittani Crimes and program coordinator Jaqueline Munive what the biggest obstacle facing their students is right now, they didn’t hesitate to answer, “Confidence.”
Not finances. Not housing — though both are imperative — but confidence. The word landed like muscle memory; before I could even think, I was already revisiting every version of myself that learned to stay quiet, self-reliant and unseen.
It may sound like a trivial answer if we don’t unpack their responses.
Many of the students in FYSS are deeply independent. They’ve had to be. Society often praises independence without asking where it came from. For some foster youth, independence is like breathing air. Independence, in this context, isn’t a strength built in comfort — it’s a survival skill. It means figuring things out alone, not asking for help, not relying on systems that haven’t always shown up for you.
But college doesn’t reward survival. It rewards access. And that’s where the disconnect begins.
“These students know how to survive,” one of them explained. “What we’re trying to teach them is how to use what’s available to them.”
That includes things many students take for granted — textbook vouchers, meal assistance, transportation support and counseling. For some, even walking up to a table and asking about those resources can carry a sense of shame. FYSS exists to remove that barrier.
The program currently serves over 120 students, with about 40 actively engaged on a consistent basis. When it first started, there were only 17. Now, 24 students are set to graduate or transfer by the end of this month. Growth like that doesn’t happen by accident. It happens through consistency — and through people who understand what these students are carrying. When asked about success stories, both Crimes and Munive pointed to the same student. Someone who entered the program shy, withdrawn, and unsure of themselves. Today, that same student is attending Cal State Long Beach and actively pushing past fears that once shackled them. That kind of transformation isn’t loud. It doesn’t trend. But it’s real. And it raises a larger question — one that goes beyond this campus: What do people understand about foster youth?
When I asked them what they wish more people knew, their answer wasn’t defensive. It was direct.
Their students have goals. They want to become lawyers, social workers and healthcare professionals. They want stability, careers and purpose — just like anyone else. That shouldn’t be surprising. But it still is. There’s a quiet assumption that rides passenger with foster youth long after they leave the system — that they’re behind, damaged, or somehow less equipped. That assumption shows up in classrooms, hiring decisions and in the way people ultimately view and treat them. But it misses a basic truth: we are a communal species. No society thrives when large numbers of its people are taught to survive without belonging. Foster youth aren’t lacking ambition. If anything, they’ve had to define it earlier than most.
National data says fewer than 10% of foster youth earn a college degree. Not because they aren’t capable, but because instability changes the way people learn to move through the world. Frequent relocations, broken routines, inconsistent guidance and survival-based independence can make structure feel unfamiliar long after the chaos ends. Roughly one in four youth who age out of foster care experience homelessness shortly afterward. Not because they failed, but because most people underestimate how much support the average young adult quietly receives. Programs like FYSS don’t erase those challenges. But they do something just as important — they make the path visible.
For me, being in that space brought something back that I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I swam around this thought for quite some time. Many foster youth quietly carry what I also carried. Beyond, “Can I make it?” is a quiet, deeper doubt: “Does anyone actually care if I do?”
It’s not something people usually say out loud. But it’s there — in the hesitation to ask for help, in the instinct to handle everything alone, in the way independence becomes identity. While I was in college, programs like this weren’t as visible — if they existed at all. And while I don’t see my own path as lesser because of it, I can recognize the difference something like FYSS might have made. Not just in resources — but in reassurance.
Because for many foster youth, the absence isn’t just financial. It’s structural. It’s emotional. It’s the lack of a built-in support system that most people never have to think about. Most people don’t realize how much of adulthood is inherited. Stability. Guidance. A couch to sleep on after failure. Someone to call when life caves in. Foster youth often enter adulthood without those invisible safety nets, yet are expected to perform at the same level as everyone else. What FYSS is building is more than a program. It’s a network. A place where asking for help isn’t a weakness but a strategy.
“I take pride in the community we’ve established here,” Munive said. “Watching these students come out of their shells — that’s why I do this.”
That shift — from surviving alone to moving forward with support — is foundational. And it challenges one of the most persistent misconceptions about foster youth: that they’re broken. They’re not. They’re individuals who learned how to navigate the world without the guidance, stability and reassurance most people quietly depend on every day. Some people mistake that struggle for weakness. On the contrary, it often produces a level of resilience most will never have to develop.
But there’s something larger here than foster care alone. Because the truth is, no one becomes who they are entirely on their own. Behind almost every success story is some form of support — family, mentorship, community, encouragement and forgiveness. Most people simply never have to notice it because it was always there. Foster youth do notice it. They must.
That’s why programs like the one at El Camino College matter. Not because they “save” young adults or students, but because they restore something many students have spent years learning to live without: the ability to rely on others without shame. These events won’t fix the foster care system overnight. They won’t erase every gap or hardship. But they do something just as important.
They remind people that support is not a privilege reserved for the lucky. It’s part of what allows human beings to be human at all.