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The last time Lerone Matthis was released from the Division of Juvenile Justice, in April 2008, he feared he had reached bottom.
“I was discouraged by the prospects for a meaningful future,” Matthis recalled.
He didn’t have a place to rest his head, bathe, or change his clothes. He wore the same jeans and a white shirt that was dingy around the neck because it hadn’t been washed for a month. He bought socks from a neighborhood liquor store, relied on relatives and friends for food and shelter, and at times the former foster youth simply went hungry.
However, Matthis had earned a GED in jail. When he got out, he enrolled in City College of San Francisco through an educational support system for the formerly incarcerated. Still, the 29-year-old single father of two young children never believed he would graduate.
via Foster youths’ financial climb through college getting even steeper – by Rosa Ramirez.