The College Dream newsletter is a Substack I co-write with my former student, Adama Jarju. The newsletter recounts Adama's path from a village in The Gambia to a computer science degree at Temple University Japan, and our nearly two-decade friendship that made it possible.
We met in 2008, when I was volunteering as an English teacher during a gap year and Adama was one of her sixth-grade students. What started as a classroom connection turned into an unlikely, years-long partnership: a small scholarship that helped Adama finish high school. That transformed into a collaboration to help Adama achieve a life long dream of attending an American college. Adama’s college dream took almost a decade of navigating financial obstacles, institutional red tape, and immigration barriers. But, at long last, he is now in the middle of a bachelor's degree at Temple University Japan in Tokyo, studying computer science, and working two jobs to support himself.
What makes our newsletter unique is that it is a real-time account of a young man fighting (and succeeding!) to break himself and his family out of the cycle of poverty into which they were born, one school semester at a time.
Head over to Substack and subscribe! The newsletter is 100% free for all readers: thecollegedream.substack.com