Poor Kid's College Dreams

Past Due Tuition Payment Needed - $8500 Deadline - August 26, 2018 Hello, thank you for taking the time to look at my campaign, my name is Charles but people call me CJ. Now, I know what this looks like, “another kid asking for money for college,” but I promise you there is more to the story. I grew up in South Philadelphia, if you know anything about Philly you know that it is very low income outside of specific areas and Center City. I am from Grays Ferry, and that is not in Center City nor those specific areas, mind you. We struggled. For a while, my dad lived with my mom, my brother, my sister, and I, and we managed okay. Then he left, although he tried to stay in our lives, that meant nothing without financial support, besides the minimal child support he paid and crippling alcoholism. My sister left earlier on than my dad though, haven’t seen her since 2015. Oh, but she did manage to leave her daughter with my already struggling mother to raise, besides the pills and injections my sister did. My brother was the only saving grace, he gave my mom the financial support she needed until he got on his feet and moved out in early 2016. By then, it was just me, my mom, and my niece. The only income we had was my mom’s, I brought very little in from my minimum wage job and the difficult job situation in my area. So we would go sometimes a few days without food, sometimes without running water, so on and so forth. My mom would have to constantly ask for help, from my brother, my dad, friends. She did get government help as well, but with a growing child and essentially two adult stomachs it was not easy. But I tried my best to do well in school, seemingly the only area I excelled in. I graduated high school in the top of my class, in National Honor Society, Student Council, on the Cross Country Team (in which I managed to complete a full marathon at age 18, which still surprises even myself), and the Bowling Team. A GPA of 3.92 and 9th out of 124 kids in my class. My mom and brother were always telling me to go college, "You're too smart to not go to college". So I did, I went for a semester at the Community College of Philadelphia and then transferred to Widener University. After just one semester at Widener, I fell in love with the school and I am willing to do anything to continue attending. I enrolled as undecided, but I plan to go for Accounting once I am hopefully back fully enrolled. I finished my first semester at Widener on the Dean's list, 3.92 GPA, and I was planning to get into more extra curricular activities. Just one problem, I still need to pay the tuition from the spring semester which has already passed. My estimated family contribution is nothing, and I have already utilized FAFSA. I couldn’t rely on scholarships because I was a transfer student, meaning no GPA or transcript. So it is now almost July and I still owe a great deal. I have been applying to every possible student loan I can, but I have to rely on a cosigner and unfortunately my family members do not have the best credit history so we have been declined countless times. I am currently working two jobs and trying to save what I can. Next semester I will have a much easier time, since I will have a GPA and much more options. But before that can happen I need to finish off this semester. If you can give anything I will appreciate it to no end.