After a year off due to the pandemic, the Hispanic Alliance resumed our leadership accelerator program, the Student DREAMers Alliance (SDA).
SDA serves Juniors and Seniors from Berea and Carolina High Schools, giving them the tools to grow and develop leadership abilities to make our future brighter.
The Student DREAMers Alliance is a journey of guided self-discovery. SDA is designed to empower and magnify the voices of DREAMers, to increase awareness of education inequity, and to advocate for changes in state legislation to achieve equal access to public, post-secondary education for all youth.
SDA is the first strategy towards a broader goal of addressing a critical need for diverse leadership able to accelerate access to opportunity for the growing Hispanic population in South Carolina.
The Student DREAMers Alliance fosters exceptional, values-based leaders.
SDA is shaping the future of the Upstate to be more inclusive.
The majority of our SDA students are the first in their families to graduate high school and attend college. Many of them help support their households financially, often having to choose between college and work, or an unpaid internship and a minimum wage job. In an effort to support SDA alumni after their completion of the program, we piloted a paid internship program for our college-aged students who are figuring out their career paths.
Amy Cantarero Romero participated in Class III of SDA in the 2018-2019 school year.
Amy graduated from Carolina High School in 2020 and is currently studying nursing at USC-Upstate. She has remained in contact with Hispanic Alliance and shared that she was looking for an internship for the summer of 2021. We were able to connect her with Bon Secours St. Francis and she completed a paid internship there, exposing her to the inner workings of the nursing department and being mentored by the chief nursing executive at BSSF.
Amy said, “It was a very good experience because I was able to build relationships with people in my desired field of study.”
The knowledge and connections that Amy gained from this internship have already set her up for success in her future career.
In our 5th year of the Student Dreamers Alliance, we are proud to report:
- 10 colleges & universities are attended by 38 SDA Alumni
- 4,080 Hours of Leadership Development invested in Our Future Leaders
- Over $30,000 has been provided in scholarship assistance to Hispanic and Latino students seeking secondary education.
We are shaping the future to be more inclusive. We champion diversity and unite cultures, helping our community to reach new heights.
Thank you for strengthening our wings. We hope you’ll continue to support our journey into a future of unlimited potential.
