This campaign has ended. However, you may still support the Underground Scholars Program Support Fund here.
Right now, exceptional students are sitting in youth detention facilities across California with college-level GPAs and dreams of attending UC Davis. But they're serving sentences that could keep them locked up for years - unless someone intervenes.
The Underground Scholars Program is that intervention.
We've pioneered a groundbreaking approach: working directly with juvenile court judges, probation departments, and juvenile attorneys to secure early release for incarcerated youth who qualify academically for UC Davis. Through a new court initiative called Less Restrictive Programming, we make the case to judges that these students deserve education over continued incarceration. When judges agree, Underground Scholars becomes the reason these youth walk free early - not to the streets, but straight to a UC Davis classroom.
We have our first cohort on campus right now. These students wouldn't be here without us - they'd still be behind bars. But their success depends on what happens next.
When released early, these youth arrive with nothing: no laptop, no housing deposit, no winter clothes, no meal plan. Your donation provides the essentials that transform early release into genuine opportunity - stable housing, food security, technology for coursework, and emergency support.
The impact is concrete: $500 buys a laptop. $1,000 covers housing. $2,500 ensures food for a quarter.
We've proven this model works. Now we need resources to scale it - to go before more judges, advocate for more youth, and support more students on campus.
Help us grow. Because every student we bring to UC Davis is one less young person aging out of the system with nothing.
No updates for this campaign.
🫶Donors
View All Donors