The Program for Advancing The Health Sciences (PATHS) is a Virtual, 100% volunteer-run mentorship program based out of Bethesda, Maryland that connects DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) High School students who are interested in biology and health with young working professionals in the area. These students may come from underrepresented backgrounds, be future first-generation college students, or have few connections and resources for pursing a healthcare profession. Mentorship is provided in a structured, 2x month virtual setting by background-checked individuals.

PATHS programming helps with students meet their personal and academic goals of entering a health science profession, learn about careers they would not have otherwise, and create lasting support networks with their mentors.

Since 2020, we have supported over 400 high schoolers by providing 1-on-1 mentorship, professional development, and career exposure seminars. We currently partner with 3 school districts - Prince George County Public Schools, Fairfax County Public Schools, and Alexandria County Public Schools.

We "employ" 2 volunteer directors who handle all of the PATHS administration, mentor-mentee matching, record-keeping, task delegation, scheduling, and internal and external communications.

Alongside mentoring, approximately one-third of our mentors serve within committees that help with the development, organization, and administration of PATHS-specific programming. Our reach is able to scale geographically for both mentors and mentees. For mentors, some of our partnered school districts have a 100% virtual background check. For mentees, our partnerships extend to multiple school districts.

This GoFundMe will help fund the operational costs of our organization. Many of our costs were subsided by the previous directors.

Our current website (which we'd like to update to a more edit-friendly site) is here . A updated preliminary website has been provided here .

A breakdown of costs for 2025-2026 include:

Total Operation Costs: $558.73

While PATHS is currently a volunteer organization, due to over 4 years of continued success, we plan on expanding to a full nonprofit status, which would allow us to:

Additionally, we'd love to provide additional support and programming for the mentees, including:

All donors will be updated of how the money is being spent.

All donors will receive an honorable mention on the pathsmentorship website.