It’s graduation season!!!

Here in Kensington people know how to celebrate a graduation -- cars honking, people yelling, windows decorated, balloons everywhere.  Graduation means that someone has beat the odds and triumphed over the obstacles.  After all, the dropout rate in Philly is 42%... some schools only see 25% of the young men getting the diploma.  So we are excited this year…

We have 3 high school graduates connected to The Simple Way headed off to college at Eastern University.  And we are sooooooo thankful to be working with Eastern to subvert the statistics and pave a way for kids from our neighborhood to create a different future than the patterns of inequity and a broken education system might dictate for them.

Join us in celebrating:

• Michael Rosario
• Jesse Martinez
• Teyanna Jett

Eastern is providing full tuition, but we are raising money to help with books, room and board, etc… so feel free to send a little graduation gift!
By the way, in case you haven’t heard… there was another little graduation ceremony.  Shane received an honorary doctorate from Eastern! Check on this post later this week for a YouTube version of the event!

Shane wrote a few more graduation reflections on the CNN blog... Check it out here.

(you can call Shane “Dr.” if you want to but you might keep in mind how you would feel about a surgeon or a dentist with an “honorary” degree in medicine… good thing he’s “only” doing theology – hahaha)