Since October 2003, GATX employees have helped twenty seniors at San Francisco's Galileo High School gain admission to college. The students are members of the statewide Achievement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program, which is directed towards students who might not otherwise attend college. Many of these students are from low-income families and/or are U.S. immigrants or children of immigrant parents.
GATX volunteers for the AVID program:
- Visited the Galileo campus to help students complete their admission forms.
- Helped students complete financial aid applications, which can be quite confusing to students who never filled out a tax return or a personal balance sheet.
- Held admissions applications working sessions at GATX, where we hosted lunch and introduced them to the company. For many of the students this was their first exposure to a corporate office environment or even the business world.
- Introduced the students to possible careers by serving as guides in a job shadowing project. Students visited the offices and sat with employees at their desks.
- Provided job search and interviewing tips because nearly all the students will need to find summer and/or part-time employment to fund their college education.
The seven months of hard worked paid off as all of the students in the program were accepted by at least one college or university. One student was accepted to the University of California at Berkeley and received a full scholarship.
