Chances are that if you’ve been successful in life, somewhere along your path there has been a person who believed in you – someone who shared their knowledge, guided you with a key decision, helped hone your skills, or served as an inspiration for what you could achieve.

But what if no one like that existed in your life? Or in the lives of anyone you knew?

This is the reality for tens of thousands of youth in Canada’s impoverished neighbourhoods. Lacking sufficient financial means, support at home, positive role models, and opportunities to grow, many drop out of high school. It’s a decision that costs them their education and future earning potential. Taken collectively, it costs their community by ingraining a culture of failure. Nationally, it costs our economy through a reduced employment pool and tax base, and an enormous strain on public expenditures.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Pathways to Education is working to help make Canada a Graduation Nation. Through three integrated strategies – program excellence and innovation, national expansion, and broadened impact – we will mobilize the skills, networks, discourse and resolve to ensure that future generations of Canadians are able to build successful lives, contribute to thriving communities, and bolster our country’s productivity and prosperity.

We’ve seen what happens when we challenge youth to succeed. They rise to the occasion. Now we hope that you will too. Your support will ground our kids in the knowledge that someone believes in them. Invest in their dreams. Unlock their potential. And you will transform an entire nation through the power of education.

  

David Hughes

President & CEO