SUSSEX COUNTY, Del. - As students everywhere settle into their new school years, many seniors in Sussex County are planning to stay in their classes until they graduate. That’s just one of many reasons those students are thankful for local nonprofit, Pathways to Success.
Ashlyn Horton joined Pathways to Success as a freshman at Sussex Tech.
“Ever since then it’s been nothing but opportunities," Ashlyn says.
She credits the nonprofit for taking her to new places and being a place she can go to with anything.
“I feel like it’s been an outlet, like a place for me to go to," Ashlyn says.
In the Pathways office, Ashlyn also gets to hone her career path.
“I’m an office assistant and I’m only 17 and I don’t know anything about that, but they’ve helped me learn real life job skills and stuff,” Ashlyn says.
The organization creates endless opportunities on a pathway to a higher education for many first generation college students.
“Trying to figure out all of these applications, the FAFSA and making sure that my financial aid is how it needs to be," says Shamaya Young.
Shamaya helped extend the pathway to the next education level. She founded Pathways to Success College about a year ago to help students stay in college like the parent program helps students stay in high school.
“We kind of build off of the high school program into college at Del State University," Shamaya says.
The organization’s founder, Faye Blake, says a third pathway for mental health started in response to the pandemic.
“Pathways to Well Being is our mental health arm of Pathways," Blake says.
Blake’s goal went from serving the under-served in the classroom to serving them at home.
“For about a good 8 or 9 months, they were kind of in those under-served circumstances for a while, so we’re trying to help them just talk about things, come up with strategies to help them, etc. so we do have a licensed clinical social worker that we hired," Blake says.
With a presence in Cape, Milford, Seaford and Sussex Tech High Schools, Blake says the program has a 98 percent graduation rate and a 96 percent rate of going on to college.
“8th to 9th grade is a real transitional year and that’s where you start finding your dropout rates are in the 9th grade, so that was the reason for wanting to start with 9th grade and then we just carry out until they graduate and then a year after that," Blake says.
Eventually Blake says the goal is to get more of Sussex County, not just students, onto their Pathways to Success.
Ashlyn and Shamaya both say they’re looking forward to this year’s Pathways to Success Girls Summit. The organization holds that conference annually to inspire 9th through 12th grade students with workshops and guest speakers.
