ATLANTA — A first-of-its-kind festival aims to raise money for students at historically Black colleges and universities.
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For hundreds of thousands of students across the country, there’s nothing that compares to the Black college experience, and Atlanta is home to some of the nation’s top HBCUs.
However, it’s the cost of higher education that’s the focus of the first-of-its-kind HBCU Aware Fest, hosted by the Student Freedom Initiative.
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The fest is a week of celebrity panels, events, and a huge benefit concert focused on financial literacy, wealth building, and tackling student loan debt, which is disproportionately higher for students who come from under-resourced communities.
“How can the private sector, the public sector, and the federal government come together to make college more accessible?” said Clark Atlanta University President George French Jr.
French says students need to see what’s possible.
“They need to see that I was sitting where they are sitting, wondering how am I going to get through financial aid one more semester,” French told Channel 2’s Lori Wilson.
He hopes students take advantage of HBCU Aware Fest by attending sessions that teach them how to manage money and grow wealth, and that it shows them how much support they truly have.
“They need to see people who look like them, talk like them, that live in the neighborhoods where they come from — to know that the way out is still through higher education, without a doubt,” French said.
The Aware Fest concert will feature Jill Scott, Earth, Wind & Fire, Common, GloRilla, Yolanda Adams and more. The show is on Thursday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are still available. Click here for more information.
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