College Bound Dorchester to honor Rep. Walsh at June 9th gala

College Bound Dorchester will host its seventh annual We Are College Bound event on June 9 at UMass Boston to honor State Representative Marty Walsh for his support of the organization and Dorchester. The event will also celebrate College Bound’s commitment to helping residents of all ages seek educational opportunities for themselves.
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There will be a reception and dinner, followed by an auction where guests can donate toany of College Bound’s five programs: Early Education, Out of School Time, Adolescent Development, Alternative Education and Adult Education.

No matter what form it has taken (safe haven, classroom, after-school program, etc.), the organization has helped youth throughout Dorchester. Its roots stretch back to 1965 when three settlement houses banded together to form the Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses.

“We’ve been around and involved in a lot of work in Dorchester for a number of years...to put it mildly,” CEO Mark Culliton quipped.

Education, health, social and human services were the broad focus of FDNH. Little House, Log School, Kit Clark Senior Services and Dorchester House are just a few established and well-known organizations who are part of College Bound’s past, present and future. In 2008, FDNH began to concentrate more on higher education for youth and reworked its mission. It changed it name to College Bound Dorchester in February 2010 to reflect its new vision.

Culliton spearheaded the transition to the educational focus. When the organization looked at the data, he says, Dorchester had a college graduation rate under 25 percent with 9th-graders alone having an approximately 10 percent or less probability of the same.

“The focus really has become much more on college and college as the ticket out of cycles of poverty and to greater opportunity both for individuals, but more importantly, for our Dorchester community,” Culliton notes. “And so [we are] focusing much more on that as a gateway to success than where we had before.”

“An organization like Federated and now College Bound has to adapt and change in order to have the opportunities make, really, impact in the community,” Culliton adds. “If they don’t or if we don’t, then we’re going to be stuck fixing a problem that no longer exists because things have changed.”

As creatures of habit, most people don’t like change. Representative Marty Walsh says he is no exception. After sometimes heated discussions with Culliton regarding Little House’s mission change as part of College Bound, Walsh agreed that what College Bound envisioned for Dorchester was “a very lofty, well thought-out goal [that] will give a lot of people, young people, the opportunity to succeed in life.”

Walsh started visiting Little House as a kid in 1973, playing basketball, gym hockey and wiffle ball after school. He hung out there as a teenager and started volunteering around 1986. He coached and ran the hockey league until 1997, the year he was elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature.

“Little House is as big a part of shaping me as a person as is anything in the community,” he says. “When I walk in Little House, I get a feel for when I was a kid.”

Although college wasn’t emphasized as much when Walsh was there, many neighborhood kids went to college because of their involvement with Little House, he says. He praises the staff from whom he learned and admired.

“The courage and conviction and understanding of our community by somebody like Marty, who’s able...to hold on to what was positive but to push himself on what’s necessary, is just a great thing to have in one of our key advocates for Dorchester,” Culliton says of the event’s honoree. “We’re incredibly thankful to have an advocate like that who partners with us and helps shape our understanding of what Dorchester can be.”

Laurent Bennet, a Charlestown High School senior, came to Little House at the beginning of his high school career and took part in the Adolescent Development program. A well-spoken young man, Bennet will attend Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Calif. in the fall.

Upon arriving at Charlestown High after being home-schooled, Bennet recalls, “I said to myself, ‘I’m here, so I might as well make the best of it.’”

The curriculum was difficult for Bennet but College Bound helped a great deal.

“I realized it helped me motivate myself because I want to get better, for myself,” he says.

With dreams of a master’s degree, culinary arts degree and opening a restaurant of his own (complete with his artwork adorning the walls), Bennet is ambitious, but humbled by the opportunity he was given.
“I feel like if I wasn’t here... I really wouldn’t be in the situation I’m in. I wouldn’t be going off to college. I wouldn’t be as motivated and confident as I am now.”

For tickets and more information, visitcollegebounddorchester.org.


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