Responsive Education for Access, Community, and Hope (REACH)

In 2020, we received our second AANAPISI grant to fund the Responsive Education for Access, Community, and Hope (REACH) Program. REACH was created to improve and expand SF State’s capacity to eliminate an equity gap in college access, persistence, and completion.

REACH is a comprehensive set of culturally responsive and equity-minded access, awareness, and financial literacy strategies designed to improve college access, persistence, and completion of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AA&PI) and low-income (LI) students.

In REACH, we utilize the following framework:

• Responsive - This project will use an equity minded, culturally and community responsive pedagogy where students learn and appreciate their cultural and social capital to discover a sense of purpose and act toward social justice. (Ginwright and Cammarota 2007, Yosso 2005)
• Education - Responsive education is rooted in critical pedagogy and Ethnic Studies and provides a framework for how we build and sustain the REACH program. (Freire 1970; Bowles and Gintis 1976; hooks 1994; Kozol 1991; Shor 1992)
• Access - The ARC of Ethnic Studies is grounded within self-Determination aimed at challenging Eurocentric curriculum in education and using an Ethnic Studies lens to respond to educational inequities. (Collier and Gonzalez 2009; Ethnic Studies Principles 1968)
• Community - In building community, Yosso (2005) describes a counter space as an academic and social space that fosters and validates identities and learning of students of color within a hostile racial campus climate.
• Hope - Is instrumental in transforming a future society that resists traditional political sectarianism towards radical forms of love and freedom.