Cultivating the Next Generation

Many of the scholarship students are the first in their family to go to college. Marlene Castro, 18, of Redwood City, whose father is a gardener and whose mother owns a house-cleaning business, won a scholarship in 2008. "It’s difficult for my parents to even make a house payment, so without Catalino’s help I would have gone to a community college and tried to transfer," says Castro, who intends to pursue a double major in media studies and rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley.

Her mother, Ana Ramirez Castro, says, "Nothing makes a parent prouder than knowing your child has done well. I got chills all over when Catalino phoned to tell us Marlene had won." Marlene’s academic success has inspired her younger brother, Jose Jr., to apply for a foundation grant to attend the Academy of Art University in San Francisco next year.

Every grant is critical, given that only only 14 percent of U.S.-born and 5 percent of foreign-born Latinos earned bachelor’s degrees, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Low-income Latino families place high value on a college education, but financial constraints often block their dreams, according to the Public Policy Institute. In addition, students and parents may be unfamiliar with the school system and local resources, says institute economist Deborah Reed. "Parents these days have to advocate for their child through the K–12 years to be sure their kids are getting the right college preparatory class work," she says. "Foreign-born parents often trust the schools to take care of that, but where one guidance counselor may be assigned to hundreds of students, the schools can’t do the job."

Even before his two sons were born, Tapia and his wife, Margarita, started saving money for their children’s education, setting aside a few dollars from his jobs in a bakery, carwash, machine shop, and finally his gardening business. "Catalino is one of the most compelling examples we’ve ever encountered of people becoming change-makers, no matter what their background or socioeconomic level," says Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of Civic Ventures, which awards the Purpose Prize to age 60-plus social innovators. "You don’t have to be a Bill Gates or an Al Gore to translate your skills and experience into an encore career helping others."

Tapia’s work has just begun. He intends to invest the prize money in interest-bearing certificates of deposit to expand the scholarship program. In a few years, he plans to turn his gardening business over to his older son and work full-time running his foundation. Then he wants to go back to school. "Maybe it was an advantage to me not to have a formal education, because that inspired me to help others, but now it’s time for me to get my high school diploma," he says. "And after that, who knows?"