A year ago, Amanda Arvizo was a senior at Banning High within the International Trade Education Program Global Safety and Security Academy. Her grades were slipping, college was about the furthest thing from her mind, and it seemed she had nowhere to turn for help. Forced to leave her home, she has lived in five places in the past 12 months, but thanks to a support network pulled together from Banning, ITEP, the College of Business Administration and Public Policy at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and the Port of Los Angeles, she is now into her second semester at the university with a very clear goal in front of her: become the first in her family to graduate from college.

To William Franklin, the idea of change, which was the theme of President Barack Obama’s campaign, took on even greater meaning as he watched the presidential inauguration from the National Mall. The South Los Angeles native met several attendees who had previously been in Washington D.C. on another historic occasion: the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The director of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and TRIO programs at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Franklin has the chance to witness change everyday in the students he and his staff help.