Fostering College Success Initiative (formerly known as The Dorm Project)

College life comes with its own challenges for students in foster care, as they often struggle to fit in and keep up academically with their more advantaged peers. The Foundling’s Fostering College Success Initiative was founded to provide comprehensive academic and social supports to help young people in foster care across all of New York City’s foster care system succeed in college and beyond.

The Fostering College Success Initiative has built upon The Foundling’s unique capacity for supporting the educational achievement of older adolescents. The Initiative targets the increasing number of older youth in foster care and provides a wide range of supports – academic, social, financial, and professional – to prepare students to graduate from college with a four-year degree, ensuring a better future. Participants are supported by College Success Coaches who are deeply in touch with and trained to respond to the issues that this unique population faces. The program also includes career counseling and academic support that is provided by a team of tutors who ensure that each student is prepared to pass their classes, develop effective study habits, choose a major, and implement a long-term academic plan.

This program is a collaboration with the Administration of Children’s Services, and works closely with the City University of New York (CUNY) and other universities.