Our Initiatives

The LACC Foundation advances student success through integrated initiatives that remove barriers, expand opportunity, and drive measurable improvements in retention, completion, and workforce outcomes.

Basic Needs

Providing immediate financial and essential support to stabilize students, prevent disruptions to their education, and improve retention and completion outcomes.

Components

Provides a comprehensive nutrition safety net that ensures no student has to choose between their education and their next meal. Through a holistic approach to food security, Food for Thought offers flexible supports including grocery gift cards, campus meal credits for on-campus dining through the Cub Store and campus cafeteria, fresh Everytable meals, targeted midterm and finals meal assistance, grab-and-go snacks distributed through student support hubs across campus, and targeted meal resources that strengthen campus food security. Through leadership in developing California Community College EBT guidebook resources that support broader institutional adoption of on-campus EBT access, Food for Thought also contributes to systems-level innovation beyond LACC. By removing the barrier of hunger and expanding nutrition support, the program helps students remain focused, persist in their studies, and successfully reach graduation.

Serving as the central hub of the Basic Needs Initiative, City Cares Network (CCN) addresses immediate life crises by removing complex financial barriers that can disrupt a student’s education. From textbooks and transportation to emergency rent, utilities, state benefit navigation including CalFresh and other public benefits, and unexpected financial shocks, CCN provides critical stabilization while connecting students to longer-term support strategies that keep them enrolled and on track.

Provides a free on-campus resource center that supports the whole student through access to new and gently used clothing, shoes, accessories, and essential family items in a retail-style setting. From everyday needs and interview-ready attire to diapers and children’s clothing for parenting students, Cubby’s Closet helps remove financial burdens while building
confidence and readiness for academic, professional, and personal success.

Serves as a flexible semester-based
funding source that powers direct student support through City Cares Network and other Basic Needs interventions. By allocating resources throughout fall, winter, spring, and summer, the Cubby Care Fund helps ensure students can access timely financial stabilization whenever unexpected barriers threaten their ability to remain enrolled and succeed.

Provides flexible Foundation-funded
emergency support that helps fill critical gaps when students face needs that cannot be met through other resources. By maintaining semester-based funding throughout the academic year, LACC Foundation Emergency Assistance helps ensure students can access responsive support whenever unexpected barriers threaten their stability, enrollment, or success.

Provides targeted emergency support for current and former foster youth through Guardian Scholars, helping address urgent needs such as food, housing, furnishings, transportation, and other essential stabilization resources. By responding to the unique barriers foster youth may face, this support helps ensure students have the foundational security needed to remain enrolled, rebuild stability, and continue progressing toward academic and personal success.

Provides textbook and essential supplies support that helps students overcome the rising cost of course materials, where a single textbook can often exceed $200. By helping cover these critical academic expenses, the Book Award reduces financial barriers, strengthens classroom readiness, and ensures students have the tools they need to remain enrolled and succeed.

Health and Opportunity

Addressing the social determinants of health by expanding access to comprehensive healthcare, behavioral health, and financial capability for students, families, and the broader community to support overall well-being, stability, and long-term success

Components

Represents a transformative healthcare partnership that expands access to comprehensive medical, behavioral health, prevention, and wellness services for Los Angeles City College students and their families. By embedding trusted community healthcare directly into the campus ecosystem, this collaboration addresses critical social determinants of
health, strengthens student stability, and ensures access to integrated care that supports both educational success and long-term well-being.

A campus- and community-wide financial education component providing tools, guidance, and practical strategies to support financial stability, income development, debt reduction, student loan literacy and repayment planning, and long-term financial well-being for students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the broader community.

REAL

REALITY-BASED EDUCATION AND
LAUNCH

Empowering students in high-demand, high-wage sectors by eliminating financial barriers and expediting career entry into the regional workforce

Components

Removes financial barriers for Career and Technical Education (CTE) students by covering essential costs such as uniforms, tools, textbooks, and licensing fees. By funding these critical needs that often fall outside traditional financial aid, we help students persist in their training, complete their programs, and transition seamlessly into the workforce.

Provides targeted completion and workforce launch support for Nursing and Radiologic Technology students by combining financial stabilization, meal assistance, academic persistence resources, and career-connected support. With exceptionally strong retention outcomes, HEAL demonstrates how holistic investment in students can accelerate completion, protect educational continuity, and successfully launch future healthcare professionals into the workforce.

Since launching in Summer 2021, Fresh Success has helped CalFresh recipients accelerate their transition to employment by providing the education, training, and supportive services required to move more quickly toward self-sufficiency. By building on existing CalFresh eligibility and combining academic persistence with workforce readiness, Fresh Success helps students strengthen stability, expand employability, and achieve long-term economic mobility.

Builds strategic employer, industry, and community partnerships that expand career-connected learning, sector-based workforce opportunities, and real-world pathways to employment while also recognizing that job placement alone is not enough. Through stabilization support that helps students navigate the critical transition between training completion and a first paycheck, this component strengthens workforce entry, retention, and long-term economic mobility.

CubSTRONG

SUPPORTING TENACITY, RESILIENCE,
OPPORTUNITY, NEEDS, AND GROWTH

Advancing educational equity for student parents by providing holistic, family-centered pathways that remove systemic Barries to completion.

Components

NEST (Navigating Education and Support for Thriving Families) is a collaborative community of practice that brings student parents, campus partners, and institutional leaders together to identify barriers, assess actual needs, and pilot supportive solutions that strengthen family-centered student success and guide the long-term development of CubSTRONG.

An extension of the broader Break It to Make It Program (BITMI), this component provides specialized reentry and educational support for formerly incarcerated women with children. By addressing caregiving responsibilities, financial instability, life-work balance, and limited support networks, the program strengthens family stability, persistence, completion, and long-term economic mobility.

Intervention Before Conviction (IBC)

COURTROOMS TO CLASSROOMS

Transforming legal obstacles into academic opportunities by prioritizing career readiness over a criminal record for justice-impacted scholars.

Components

Provides justice-informed youth development and diversion support through a California Community
Foundation and Liberty Hill-backed model that prioritizes prevention over punishment. Focused on educational attainment, leadership, workforce development, mentorship, and long-term opportunity, Ready to Rise helps justice-impacted and vulnerable youth strengthen stability, avoid deeper system involvement, and build successful pathways to adulthood.

Supports justice-impacted students as they navigate reentry and higher education through targeted programming focused on skill building, confidence, financial literacy, career exploration, and community connection to strengthen persistence, completion, and long-term economic mobility.

Provides an education-based intervention model for eligible individuals facing nonviolent felony charges, offering structured alternatives focused on accountability, noncredit education, career planning, and long-term life redirection as a pathway toward stability and opportunity.