Foster Care Student Defies the Odds

By LIZA PAPAGEORGIOU
Vanity Velazquez is a 23-year old business graduate student who attends Rutgers University-Newark. She is also a former foster youth, having grown up in different households, and statistically, she was likely to drop out of school. But she didn’t.

Velazquez obtained her bachelor’s degree, defying national statistics and proving that foster youth, with focus and drive, can succeed. This Rutgers business student, who is of Puerto Rican descent was actively involved in her college community as an undergraduate and continues to do so as a graduate student.

As an undergraduate, Velazquez consecutively received Dean’s List recognition and became a member of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, Inc. in a move to help build the Latino community on her campus. This was a major force in her success.

“My drive comes a lot from my experiences in the system, going through things that not everyone can say they did. I was alone a lot of the time so when I decided to become a part of my Greek-lettered organization, it was like I became a part of something that was bigger than I was and I found a family among it all,” said Velasquez.

National research shows that children in foster care are at high-risk of dropping out of school and are unlikely to attend or graduate from college. However, based on the January 2014 edition of the Research Highlights on Education and Foster Care, the percentage of 17-18 year old foster youth who want to attend college is 84 percent, while the number that actually graduate high school and attend college is 20 percent. Only 2 to 9 percent of those former foster youth attain their bachelor’s degree.

According to the study, Sources of Resiliency among Successful Foster Youth, conducted by Michael Hass and Kelly Graydon, the youth in their study “expressed a strong sense of commitment to help others and were heavily involved in their schools and communities. This involvement was multi-faceted, often including volunteering to work with other youth, attendance at church activities, and personal hobbies or activities. A large majority of the respondents stated that they had identified plans for their future and felt that they had a purpose in their lives. In addition, they appeared confident in their ability to reach their goals.”

A key factor toward success for a foster youth is being actively involved at school or even the community. Being a sister of a sorority in which philanthropy is a huge factor also made a huge impact in Velasquez’s undergraduate career in regards to staying involved. This was one of the many reasons that motivated her to continue her college years. According to the article, “Going Greek with a Latino Spin” printed in the Los Angeles Times, “the number of Latino undergraduates has more than tripled in the last 30 years. In 1976, there were 352,900 Latino students enrolled in undergraduate institutions, a paltry 3.7% of the national college student body across the U.S. By 2001, the most recent year with available statistics, there were more than 1.4 million Latinos in colleges, representing nearly 11% of the undergraduate student body.

“And they’re all looking for the same thing: an organization that reminds them of who they are, an organization that lets them feel comfortable,” the article mentioned. “Even if you can get into a white Greek organization, there’s a lack of appeal to their background or culture.” In addition to that, as of September 2015, Velasquez’s organization was selected as a Bright Spot from the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. As a Bright Spot, Lambda Theta Alpha is part of a national online catalog that includes over 230 programs that invest in key education priorities for Hispanics.

Rachel Marichal, senior, the former president of Lambda Theta Alpha at Ramapo’s campus stated that the organization has greatly informed her fellow peers on the position that Latinos have on campus and what they can do to break the barriers based on programs that the organization has hosted.
Velasquez’s Foster Care Experiences

The way that Velasquez entered the foster care system was a lot like many other foster youth, originating at her household. Her mother gave birth to her first-born child, Fabian, at the age of 15 and then Velasquez at 17. Her mother was young and did not have a lot of money, and she used drugs at the time. It was Velasquez’s grandmother who reported her daughter to the authorities because she could not provide for them. At that time, Vanity was only six years old.

“After three months, the government moved my brother to a different residence because my foster mother could not deal with the brother and sister ‘stuff,’ you know, fighting and arguments. They separated us,” said Velasquez.

Velasquez did not like her foster mom in Mahwah because she would never let her have a social life, every time she would go out, she would make her accompany her, and she was “very controlling.”

“She took foster children in for the money, I didn’t even know that I received monthly checks until I was out of the system,” Velasquez said.
She lost contact with her biological family completely because she did not have a phone or computer, until a few years later when she received visitation rights. Velasquez and Fabian were allowed to see each other.

Social workers would pick them up from their respective foster homes and take them to a building where they would meet and were able to talk to each other for an hour or so. Velasquez saw her mother for the first time when she was about eight and from then on about three times a year.

“Sometimes I wouldn’t want to go to the meetings because the feelings afterward were very depressing because of the separation,” she recalled.
Based on the study, Sources of Resiliency among Successful Foster Youth, participants of the study (which were successful foster youth) drew significant support from other people. Not that Velasquez had a lot of support from her biological family, but the time that she did have with them was comforting and motivated her to continue doing better in hopes that one day her life would change for the better.

“I was 15 when my mom started to get her life together, she went to rehab, went back to school to earn her GED, and used state granted programs to help her financially. She tried to get reacquainted with me but it was too late because my brother and I were about to age out of the system. When I was 16, DYFS was going to allow me to live back with my mom but it was a long and tedious process,” she said.

Velasquez’s life was handled by the system for 10 years. She said that she “kind of ran away you can say, but I went to the local library.” It was a day in which she visited her biological mother. Velasquez’s foster mother became jealous of the relationship in which Velasquez shared with her biological mother. Her foster mother called the police to search for her, in which they finally did. Her foster mother said that she did not want her back so they placed her in a temporary home in Union City for three months until they found a permanent home in Teaneck.

“I think the system is corrupt because they had me living with people who did not even speak English which was really difficult for me being that I am not fluent in Spanish,” Velasquez said.

Eventually, Velasquez was able to live with her biological mother at 16 years old. Nonetheless, life did not get any better because she constantly argued with her mother. Velasquez said that her mother would choose her boyfriend before her own kids. She explained that living together was not easy, but being apart they had a better relationship.

When Velasquez completed high school, she rented her own apartment in North Bergen, supporting herself with the salary of a manager at Dunkin Donuts. Her expenses included rent, her phone bill, electricity and car expenses. She originally attended New Jersey City University for journalism, but transferred to Rutgers after two years where she majored in nonprofit and public administration and minored in business administration. She graduated in December of 2015 and is now attending Rutgers Business School to obtain her master’s degree in supply chain management.

Velasquez said that being in foster care has shaped her into the person she is today because she did not have the true family bond that everyone else has, so she became self-sufficient in all ways, especially when it came to income.

“That motivated me to go to school and make something of myself.”
Reasons there is Success in Foster Youth

In the successful foster youth study, “one objective was to understand how foster youth account for what “worked” in their lives. The first step in this process was to ask respondents, “Who or what helped you the most and why?” Of the participants, 42 responded to this question, making approximately 60 separate comments. Only 2 respondents said “nothing” or “not sure.” A large majority (37 or 84 percent) cited persons who provided various forms of social support, while only 5 comments mentioned personal strengths such as faith or self-motivation.”

Marita Esposito, who was an Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) adviser at Ramapo for 5 years until recently accepting another position in Massachusetts, stated that she did not work with a lot of foster students but she did with many students that were brought up in similar circumstances.

She said that she had seen a lot of her students have support from their families about pursuing a higher education and that those students have successfully obtained their degrees but that she has also seen the opposite in which students had to push themselves to continue school.

Velasquez believes that being a foster child definitely had an influence in her choosing to attend college stating, “when you know what it is to live in low class, you realize this is not what you want for the rest of your life, so that kind of motivates you to do better, ” adding that it was being part of “the system” drove her to get a higher education degree.

Velasquez’s point of view is in the minority, yet she still has become a very ambitious and successful foster youth story. The Rutgers student currently works at home as a recruiter for finance and accounting for VLP Associates and is also a part time manager at 27 Mix which is a restaurant. She wants to work in corporate until she saves enough money to open her own restaurant someday. Velasquez recently was in the top 10 finalists in an entrepreneur contest ran by Jon Taffer, from Netflix’s Bar Rescue. She did not win the contest, but that just goes to show that any foster youth can have a bright future.

“The best advice i could possibly give to today’s foster youth is that everything comes to an end, meaning the circumstances that they might be in and to stay strong and motivated so that one day they will not need to let their past define them,” said Velasquez.