When Alijah Nelson began to search for local scholarships, an organization that awards scholarships exclusively for children of incarcerated parents caught his attention.
“There’s a lot of crazy scholarships for crazy things,” Nelson recalled. “And this was just so unique to me and my situation,” he said of the scholarships being offered from the Ava’s Grace Scholarship Foundation, a scholarship organization started in 2010 on behalf of children of incarcerated parents in the St. Louis region.
Nelson—who wrote an essay about how his parents landed in prison after dealing drugs out of the family’s St. Louis apartment as part of his scholarship application—is one of eight students to win a scholarship from Ava’s Grace.
The scholarships are from $3,000 to $5,000 and are renewable for four years. This is the first year that 75 percent of the scholarships from Ava’s Grace were awarded to young Black males. That decision stems in part from a large donation made to Ava’s Grace in the wake of 18-year-old Michael Brown’s shooting death last year at the hands of a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer that sparked nationwide protests over police brutality and the use of excessive force against young Black men.
Nelson plans to use his scholarship to attend Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, this fall. He said the Ava’s Grace scholarship is important to him “mainly because I’m a first generation student and it helps me overcome the financial barrier of higher education that can scare most people away.”
“It’s a meaningful scholarship because my parents’ incarceration time was a turning pivotal point in my life,” Nelson said. “Also to be rewarded for overcoming such a barrier means a lot.”
Ava’s Grace is one of a small number of organizations that provides scholarships for children of incarcerated parents.
