A statewide campaign to get resources to California’s most vulnerable students during the pandemic.
Challenge
The pandemic overwhelmed the state’s most vulnerable college students—especially low-income students of color supporting family members—in the form ofvanishing jobs, medical bills, and the need to attend class remotely without the tech to do so. Government and colleges could not move fast enough to get students what they needed.
Solution
Working with the governor’s office, hundreds of public educational institutions, non-profit partners, and a group of funders, I developed and executed a communications campaign to call attention to the issue and get dollars to the neediest students as quickly as possible. The CA College Student Emergency Support Funddistributed well over $2 million at launch and sparked a statewide conversation about student financial need and mental health.
