Amy McCracken, director of corporate work study for Cristo Rey Richmond High School, has always found herself drawn to working with urban youth. When the opportunity for a job at Cristo Rey, which opened in Richmond in the fall of 2019, presented itself, she found herself jumping at the chance to make a difference in students’ lives while also partnering with businesses to encourage support.
Cristo Rey schools are replicated from a model that first debuted in Chicago in the early ’90s and was funded and recognized by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations to aid underserved neighborhoods by providing a private Catholic school education to students who couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. In addition to being a four-year high school, “The secret sauce of Cristo Rey is the Corporate Work Study Program,” McCracken says. “The students are earning the bulk of their tuition by working in entry-level positions, even starting in ninth grade, at the city’s top companies.” She works with corporate sponsors to secure jobs for students and to make sure they are successful in those positions.
“It’s just been incredible,” McCracken says. “The kids are really empowered and are doing something that they never dreamed.”
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, McCracken worried that the corporations and entities that they work with would have to pull the jobs and salaries that they had committed to Cristo Rey, but that hasn’t been the case. “It’s amazing and stunning that people are still saying yes to us,” she says, “but I think that it speaks volumes to the philanthropic spirit of Richmond.”
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