Press Conference for Unlocking America’s Potential Project

SAN ANTONIO, TX (June 21, 2011) – AVANCE, Inc. National held a Press Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, June 21st to announce the official launch of the Unlocking America’s Potential Project (UAPP), a $12.6 million grant funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to expand AVANCE’s Parent-Child Education Program (PCEP) throughout communities across the country.

Congressman Charles A. Gonzalez, Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro – both strong supporters of AVANCE – joined AVANCE Board Chairman Dean Aguillen and President and CEO Richard J. Noriega to remark about how educational attainment programs, like AVANCE, directly align with ensuring the country’s economic competitiveness and national security.  With this grant, AVANCE is well-poised to make a strategic and long-term impact in the economy by providing low-income parents and their children the tools they need to be successful in school and ultimately secure higher paying jobs.

Attending the press conference will be Elida Galindo, an 1973 AVANCE graduate who will share her story about being 18 years old, a single mother with three children, living on welfare.  She had no job, no money, and no education.  Then AVANCE came knocking on her door.  “AVANCE changed my life.  They taught me to be a better mother and helped me get my GED.  I was able to go to college and my dream came true, I became a Nurse.  If everyone was encouraged like I was, then the world would be a better place and everyone would say, ‘Oh yes, I can do it,’ and when you feel better about yourself, you make your children feel better about themselves, and they say, ‘If Mom can do it, then I can to.’ ”