Every high school kid should be encouraged to dream about college. But until recently, higher education seemed like a pipe dream for Kenneth Chancey, an exceptionally bright yet exceptionally disadvantaged Los Angeles teen.
From February to August, Kenneth woke up each morning at the Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter. From there, he and his sister would head into their Los Angeles high school and once there, Kenneth didn’t just keep his head down, he shined. He consistently earns straight A’s, is a star football player and student body president.
CNN first aired a story about Kenneth this summer — which Tonic shared with you, too — and Kenneth revealed his ultimate goal: attending Harvard to become a doctor.
Today, Kenneth is inching closer to that goal with the help of NFL star defensive back Nnamdi Asomugha, who will finance the first step of his dream: paying for him to visit the campuses of colleges he once only imagined attending.
Asomugha, of the Oakland Raiders, heads up the Asomugha College Tour for Scholars, a foundation that takes promising inner-city kids on tours of college campuses they would never be able to afford to see on their own. Asomugha recently visited with Kenneth to reveal that he would be one of 16 students who will get an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC, in the spring to tour several college campuses.
“You don’t hear about guys like Kenneth,” Asomugha told CNN. “When you have your back against the wall and you’re trying to fight and there are so many things — so many obstacles — against you but you’re still keeping your head above the water like he’s doing … the sky’s the limit.”
According to CNN, Kenneth says he can’t wait to graduate college, and once he does he plans to pay it forward. “Once I succeed,” he said, “I will be able to help other people.”
And we have no doubt he will.
Photo courtesy of stock.xchng