Muzammil Syed always dreamed of working in health care and says the Pathways to Education program helped him make that dream a reality.
He went on to earn a master's degree and is now a medical researcher at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital. Young people like Syed are exactly who Pathways to Education aims to reach. The free program provides financial support, tutoring, career guidance and a community for lower-income students, many of them newcomers — something the organization says is particularly critical given that as many as 50 per cent of youth in low-income communities don't earn a diploma.
For some families, the financial component of the program is what gets young people across the convocation stage. Tutoring is another big one, he says. Many families the program works with would not be able to afford tutoring and parents working multiple jobs to make ends meet might not have as much time to help their children with academic challenges themselves, Bingham says.
It is an excellent program with highly skilled staff