Together, We CAN Meet the Moment
For 20 years, SoCal CAN has worked to expand college access, affordability, and completion for low-income, first-generation, and underserved students across Southern California.
Together with our members and partners, we have helped secure nearly $1 billion in state investments, advanced student-centered financial aid policies, and challenged systems that too often create barriers instead of pathways.
WHY THIS MOMENT MATTERS
As we mark 20 years, we do so with both pride and urgency—pride in what this community has built together, and urgency about the challenges students face now and in the future.
Our students and communities face renewed threats to equitable college access and attainment. Rising costs, growing basic needs insecurity, and increasing efforts to marginalize or erase communities and their right to education are placing a college credential further out of reach for too many students.
Meeting this moment requires more than isolated programs or individual policies. It requires coordinated action across the education system.
Number of CBO staff supported with training, resources & professional development opportunities
Student campaigns, initiatives and programs launched over the last 5 years to address gaps in service for the region’s most undersupported students.
Students and families served across Southern California, through our membership organizations and events.
State bills supported and passed into legislation. Additionally, sponsored 6 bills, with 2 signed into law.
Current member organizations, based throughout Southern California, all helping to increase the rate at which underserved students access and complete college.
Helped secure nearly $1 billion in state investments over the past 5 years for student aid, basic needs, and student support programs.
DELIVERING FOR STUDENTS
SoCal CAN has always centered low-income, first-generation, and minoritized students in our work. That commitment remains unchanged. This moment calls on us to sharpen our focus within those communities, particularly for students facing heightened barriers, rising discrimination, or renewed efforts to limit or erase their access to education. This includes:
- Students living in public housing
- Returning and adult learners
- Students from immigrant and mixed-status families
- LGBTQIA+ students
SoCal CAN will deepen its commitment to advancing solutions that most directly shape whether students can access, persist in, and complete college. Our priorities include: affordability, equitable college access and enrollment, basic needs security, and college completion and economic mobility.
STRENGTHENING THE NETWORK
The SoCal CAN network is built on deep trust, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to students and to one another. Organizations do not work in isolation here. They learn from each other, leverage one another’s strengths, and show up for one another because they believe in building a more equitable world together.
To grow and strengthen our Network, we will:
- Provide technical assistance to support effective program and policy implementation
- Strengthen organizational capacity, including leadership, operations, data use, and long-term sustainability
- Deepen coordination across organizations so the field can align efforts, leverage shared strengths, and solve shared challenges
- Build resilience across the field amid fiscal, political, and policy uncertainty
LOOKING AHEAD
SoCal CAN’s 20th Anniversary is a moment to honor the progress this community has made—and a call to meet the urgency of now with clarity, coordination, and resolve.
Throughout the year, this page will be updated with student stories, a timeline of our work, highlights of our impact, recognition of the partners who have made this progress possible, and ways to get involved in the work ahead.
As we look back with pride and move forward with urgency, we remain committed to building what comes next—together.