JACKSON, Miss. — A new effort wants people nationwide to help poor children in Mississippi and San Francisco save for college.
The 1:1 Fund is being launched by the Corporation for Enterprise Development. In Mississippi, the marketing effort expands on the Mississippi College Savings Account Program. And it has helped more than 500 children in Jackson, Leland and Greenville open college savings accounts.
“The 1:1 Fund will allow us to reach a whole new group of people who understand the value of higher education and want to help low-income kids go to college but haven’t known how to make that happen,” Carl Rist, the fund’s executive director, said in a statement.
A 2010 study shows students with their own college savings accounts are almost four times more likely to attend college than those who don’t have one.
In Mississippi, the program is helping preschoolers believe they’re going to college, said Ernestine Bilbrew from the Mississippi Community Financial Access Coalition.
“Just them thinking that has a tremendous impact on their aspirations to go to school,” she said. “I just fell in love with this program.”
Mississippi’s two-year pilot program has provided $30,000 to $40,000 to participants, using money from the Kellogg Foundation. The program seeds accounts in a child’s name with a $50 deposit. It then encourages families to deposit more, with the program sometimes matching those deposits. It’s a restricted, deposit-only account, so it can’t be used for anything other than some sort of post high-school education.
