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ALMA is a Latino Leadership group which is dedicated to increase the number of Latino and Hispanic students attending higher education.

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Tuition Relief Now is a student-led, volunteer driven ballot initiative campaign aiming to freeze undergraduate tuition at all 31 Cal State and University of California campuses.

With fees nearly doubling in the past six years, students are being priced out of higher education!

Join us and sign up to volunteer at www.TUITIONRELIEFNOW.org!

In a nutshell, this law will freeze tuition for 5 years for resident undergraduate students in University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU). Thereafter, the law will prevent any future tuition increases from exceeding the inflation index.

The law will raise new revenue specifically for the cost of educating UC and CSU student through a 1% tax on millionaires' income over $1 million.

The law sets up an accountability process requiring UC and CSU administrators to report to a citizens panel of students and parents how the new revenue is being spent.

Look out for your local Tuition Relief Now group and join to support your fellow students.

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Alumni Connect was a concept turned into grassroots action by ten Long Beach Polytechnic High School Alumni in January of 2006. After experiencing a privileged and rich educational environment at Loyola Marymount University for one semester, I felt the need to extend to my under resourced peers at my alma mater Long Beach Polytechnic High School the fundamental right to an education.

With nine other recent Poly High graduates, I founded Alumni Connect, a youth-run mentoring program. Alumni Connect recently received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status recognition. We began as a simple effort to give first generation and environmentally disadvantaged students an opportunity to pursue the American dream. We helped fill out community college applications, found scholarship opportunities, supported students through the financial aid application process, and more importantly, encouraged the heart through our one-on-one mentoring.

The Long Beach community benefited greatly from having its young people come back to address the unmet needs of the community. The large number of first generation Mexican Americans as well as first generation Cambodian Americans whose parents escaped the Khmer Rouge massacre make up much of the youth population in Long Beach. In addition to the lack of parental resources and English language proficiency, Long Beach's gangs and poverty ridden areas continue to marginalize historically oppressed groups.

In its third year, Alumni Connect now has eighteen mentors working with over forty high school seniors. Our mentors are Poly Alumni as well as my peers at Loyola Marymount University.

We have almost exhausted our funding from community grants and donations and are in need of minimal funding to provide programming such as a Khmer Parent Financial Aid Information Night in the first language of many first generation Cambodian Americans, as well as a graduation celebration for our students, many of whom cannot afford such a celebration of education. We put on two College Awareness Rallies a year for Poly's student body of over 4,800 students. Our funding is also used for t-shirts, finals care packages for our students, and other mentor-student bonding events such as our annual Bondfire.

Alumni Connect hopes to continue our efforts to level the playing field by working for justice and equal opportunity in our community. It is our belief that large scale change is only possible with the support of community groups who work to improve lives and build futures one person at a time.

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The need for an affordable means to obtain required textbooks is clear among university and college students. Expensive textbooks obscure aspirations for the financially struggling college student and add to the already stressful experience of transitioning to the collegiate level. BENAB will be a member-based organization that offers a solution to the problem of pricey textbooks. BENAB will provide a system through which students are given the opportunity to rent the required books needed for their classes. This method is based off the approach used in high schools where students were given textbooks at the beginning of the year and returned the books at the end of the year. By using this technique we hope to reduce the over all cost of school supply expenses, simplify the process of locating required books, eliminate stress generally put on students when trying to locate the required readings, and therefore making the transition to a higher level of education easier. Through membership fees, various grants, and donations BENAB will collect and/or purchase required books for the coming semester. Members can then rent any required book BENAB has available for classes and at the end of the semester return them to the organization. The organization plans to expand thereafter to sophomores, Jr’s and seniors in the following 5 years. Eventually BENAB hopes to expand its services to other colleges and universities nation wide becoming an on-going national aid program.