When our Site Coordinators evaluate their schools’ needs, they develop a plan to provide support where needed. Individualized support is necessary for some students to give them a real chance to challenge the systems and barriers that stand between them and their success in life. The student progresses, graduates high school, and is better prepared for life. Along the way, our Site Coordinators establish one-on-one caring relationships with these students and become someone that the child can trust, depend on, and look up to. For our senior student Lilia, Wakefield High School Site Coordinator Jackie helped give her the extra dose of empowerment she needed to shoot for the stars.

Lilia has ambitious goals for life after high school and plans to break barriers in a male-dominated profession–setting the bar high for her younger sister and other girls too. Studying Aerospace Engineering in college is Lilia’s goal. After everything she has accomplished in the short time since coming to the US from Morroco, she is confident in herself and knows she can do this. Her first language is French, and she crammed everything she learned in Morroco into English at Wakefield High School in a year! She’s a go-getter and won’t stop until she accomplishes everything she sets out to do.

Lilia and Jackie are a perfect student-site coordinator match. Lilia is outgoing, kind, and personable. Jackie’s mellow yet confident personality helps Lilia shine.  When this dynamic duo gets together, they can talk about anything: like the newest music and celebrities, math and history classes, and family and friends. Lilia has experienced loss in life and learned to lean on others, like her sister, her friends, and Jackie, to help her get through it. These life experiences have matured Lilia, but they never made her lose her joy for life or joie de vivre (in French). She’s the embodiment of happiness.

Lilia is motivated to be successful and independent. She looks forward to being a stable adult and making her family proud. Students like Lilia hope to make the world a better place one day. Jackie reminds Lilia that the world is already better because of people like her. 

Over the following months leading up to graduation, you will learn more about Lilia and others through the Senior Spotlight series, where we will follow along with our seniors during their final year of high school.