2011 GreenLight Emerald Evening Photos!

Our Beneficiary Single Stop USA

Single Stop USA helps low-income community college students stay in school by giving them easy access to financial resources and other services they need to make ends meet.

The U.S. Department of Education estimates that 80 percent of community college students face financial pressures that threaten their ability to complete their degree. In 2005 in Massachusetts, the three-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time community college students was 17.4%. Fewer than half of community college students graduated in six years. Many of these students, often the first in the families to attend college, drop about because they can’t afford to support themselves and their families and attend school.

Single Stop provides a one-stop place inside community colleges where students can access financial resources, tax filing assistance and additional services, helping to lessen the non-academic pressures like lack of adequate housing, childcare, or health insurance.

Single Stop breaks the cycle of intergenerational poverty in two ways: first, in the short term, by providing students and their families with resources that increase their income, and in the long run, by helping students stay in school through completion and thus increasing their job opportunities and lifetime earnings.