Genius at the Crossroads of Life

Tommy T. enrolled in the OPEN GATE program as an elementary student in 1998. Tommy has now completed his first year of college with a 3.8 GPA. In highschool, he wrote this reflection on the OPEN GATE program and what it meant to him.

"This program has been like a map given to me, as I head on a road trip to my future. I was never aware of the potential that I kept hidden as a child. The OPEN GATE Program was there to get me headed in the right direction. It has been hard for me, being a student in a neighborhood that is filled with gangs, drugs, and violence, to reach a point in my life where I am in charge of my future. This program has opened up countless doors for me when it seemed like I would end up trapped in a corner because of where I was brought up.

When I was starting the fourth grade, The Open Gate Program placed me in a seminar class at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School. This class has helped me
in unimaginable ways. Being in a surrounding where I would be among friends, some of whom have become lifelong friends, who would be supportive of my creative side allowed me to emerge from a shy state of mind and do things that expressed my creativity and led me to start thinking 'out of a box.'

Benjamin Franklin once said, 'Genius without education is like silver in the mine.' This quote, to me, means that having potential to be great and not having a chance to develop it would be as useless as going mining in a mine, with the potential to store gold coming out with silver. It is my belief that, without the support of the Human Development Foundation and the Open Gate Program, I would've become the thing that I work hard to get away from, a lost child with a life of crime due to peer pressure.

As I grasp the opportunity for higher education, I hope to do my part and help the people that are struggling. When I am in college, I would like to come back to an elementary school, and choose a single child which I can help and devote my free time to, the way that a few special people have done for me. I would help prepare them for whatever goals they have in life, and use the experience that I have gained through some of the hard times that I have endured. I will teach them from making mistakes that I have made, therefore helping them overcome obstacles that might slow down or even shatter their hopes and dreams. If I could do this for just one student, I would feel that I have truly made a difference in a child's life. I would also feel that I have changed that one child the way the Open Gate Program has, tremendously, changed me from a struggling student to the student 'holding all of the cards'."