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Katherine Ovalles will graduate in June from the Don Bosco Scholars First Gen College Access Program with a better understanding of what’s ahead, and with a new friend.
Miss Ovalles, an 18-year-old senior at Port Chester High School, is one of 10 scholars in the program offered by Don Bosco Community Center in Port Chester.
“It definitely helped me set a path in my mind for myself and helped me focus and put in effect what I wanted to do,” said the parishioner of the newly formed St. John Bosco parish in Port Chester.
The scholars program pairs a student with a volunteer adult coach, who assists the students in completing college, financial aid and scholarship applications. The program offers assistance to students writing college essays and taking college entrance exams such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT).
A trained coach will listen to a student explain his or her career and college preferences before the two find the best academic and affordable colleges to meet the student’s needs, a two- or four-year city, state or private school. The coach and student meet as needed.
“It’s a wonderful program, and it’s great for the coaches,” said Noelle Marder, Miss Ovalles’ coach, who worked in management consulting and is now a stay-at-home mother of two children in Greenwich, Conn.
“You get motivation and energy from them. They have so much potential, and they really can’t judge how much potential they have because they don’t have that reference point.
“We can put things in a real-world context, from the experiences we’ve had in our professional lives and education, to help them understand where this is taking them and what it might mean to them.”
Miss Ovalles is the daughter of immigrant parents, Carlos Avila, originally from Mexico, and Brigida Estrella, from the Dominican Republic. Her parents attended college in their native countries.
“Since my parents do not know much about the United States college application process, it is very difficult to find the right path with the different types of colleges, financial aid and scholarships,” said Miss Ovalles, who plans to study consumer marketing in college. “Communicating with someone with all the right connections and who has all the right understanding of what they’re doing is very useful, understanding and very important.
“I see Noelle now as a very close friend. We’ve had some fun times. She has taught me how to communicate my ideas. Sometimes, I tend to ramble, and she’s very concise and precise to the point.”
Olivia Halligan, a senior at Maria Regina High School in Hartsdale, said she hopes to become a doctor. She said the program keeps her focused on her next task and not becoming overwhelmed with the process.
“I feel I would not have gotten into the colleges I’ve gotten into so far if it wasn’t for this program,’’ said Olivia, who is being raised by her aunt, uncle and grandmother after the deaths of her parents.
Clara Roman, a stay-at-home mother of three children who is coaching Miss Halligan, started volunteering to fill a void opened by leaving the corporate world to raise her children.
“It’s incredibly rewarding when you get to help them along the way,” said Ms. Roman, a parishioner of Resurrection in Rye. “You see how they grow and mature. The person you meet that first summer is not the person you say goodbye to the next summer because you’ve seen that development.
“Olivia can do so many things. She has an exceptional personality. She needed to believe in herself a little bit more” when she first came into the program.
Miss Halligan said, “Clara has helped me with a lot of things. She did so much to find the colleges that would fit me.”
The Salesians of Don Bosco opened the Don Bosco Community Center in 1928 to serve adults and families. In the 1980s, the center changed to offer more opportunities for youths with after-school programs for the 500 children registered in the Don Bosco Boys and Girls Club.
During school hours, the center offers an English as a Second Language program, and has a food pantry and soup kitchen, which served 35,000 meals in 2017.
The center is starting its 2018-2019 scholars program this month instead of waiting until the end of the school year. Seventeen students are registered in the scholars program, the fourth, compared with eight in the first. With the early start, scholars will attend an ACT boot camp and college essay workshop in April.
“Everybody feels together that if you can get a kid successfully through college, you’re going to change not only his future but the whole trajectory of the family because the younger ones will come up thinking that going to college is the new norm for that family,” said Ann Heekin, executive director of the Don Bosco Community Center and a parishioner at Resurrection.
