- COA stands for cost of attendance minus grants and SAI equals balance.

So we're looking at direct cost, so tuition, fees, room, meal plan, board.

- [Jason] Janae Aiken teaches her students all about the college application process and all that's involved when it comes to paying for higher education.

- Student aid funds typically do not have to be repaid like a grant or a scholarship.

Like you don't have to pay that back.

Do we understand?

Grants, scholarships you do not have to pay back.

What is something that we do have to pay back?

(students murmuring) Right, student loans.

- [Jason] But this class isn't taking place at a school, it's at the Carolina Youth Coalition where Janae serves as the associate director of College Access.

- Now student loans, we want that to be like the last case scenario for all of you.

Absolute last option.

- [Jason] So who and what exactly is the Carolina Youth Coalition?

- We're a college access and persistence organization, meaning we work with high-achieving, under-resourced students to help get them to and through college.

And we do that by alleviating academic, social and financial barriers to higher education.

And then we also stick with them while they're in college to ensure that they successfully transition to college and leave with strong prospects for the workforce or graduate studies.

- The next one that I want you guys to write down is indirect cost.

Alright, so that's personal expenses, books, supplies, transportation.

- [Jason] The Nonprofit Youth Coalition is now in its seventh year, launching in 2018.

For them, it's all about upward mobility.

- The community's been very welcome and I think because we have a mission that really aligns with what the community finds important and prioritizes, we've gotten a lot of support.

- [Jason] It's that support from community partners like Accenture, a global technology and consulting firm, and Apparo that are helping the Carolina Youth Coalition thrive.

- Apparo is a nonprofit that serves other nonprofits and we do that by engaging the skilled volunteers of area corporations to come in in a facilitated manner and bring their skills to elevate the ability of nonprofits to serve more effectively in their business processes and in their technology.

- Improving the communities where we work and live is a priority for Accenture and we've got a special commitment towards improving economic mobility.

And obviously there's opportunity in Charlotte, a need in Charlotte.

- [Jason] Apparo and Accenture have been teaming up for years working on a project together called "Mission Possible."

It was designed to help area non-profits create a tech-based solution to maximize workflow and help solve their most pressing challenges.

- Mission Possible is a program that's been going on in partnership with Accenture for 17 years now and it is aimed at improving economic mobility by giving the technology innovation to nonprofits who are working to help those in our community who are economically disadvantaged.

- One of the things that we find, and one of the things I experienced personally is that the opportunity to work alongside of the nonprofits here in Charlotte and just help them leverage technology to deepen or broaden their mission is a really fulfilling experience.

- [Jason] Each nonprofit entering the Mission Possible competition gets 15 hours of free consulting services with a winning organization getting a lot more.

- The winner of the Mission Possible award receives a $10,000 check to implement their project as well as $50,000 of value of Accenture time to execute the project.

- We fund the program and we come alongside the nonprofit to implement the technology idea to allow them to deepen or broaden their mission and their impact in the local community.

- [Jason] A committee votes for the winner with the Carolina Youth Coalition winning the competition in 2021, which allowed the organization to train mentoring volunteers to work with high school students.

- There's a committee of CIOs, community CIOs who gather and read the applications and make a final decision on who will be the winner.

- Our idea that we submitted was to identify a learning management system that would allow us to train more volunteers online and asynchronously.

This was during Covid, so we weren't in person there.

So we needed a technology solution where we could still prepare our mentors to work with our young people and to do frankly more of it.

We have a number of staff, but we have hundreds of students.

And so without those volunteers, we're not able to provide that one-on-one support that our fellows, as we call them, need throughout the college application process.

- [Jason] In the four years since winning the competition, the CYC has teamed up with Apparo on other projects.

- I think we've done, I think five different projects with Apparo in some different capacity, whether it's laptops, whether it's helping us with our wifi security, identifying a CRM system.

So we love Apparo, they're a great partner for us and have played a critical role in helping us expand and scale our program.

- Who can tell me what the term interest means?

Like what happens like when you're paying interest?

Yeah.

- [Jason] The impact of the Carolina Youth Coalition can't be overstated.

Last year, 92% of its fellows were first-generation college students earning nearly 18 million in scholarship money and grants with 75% of its seniors attending college debt free.

- We've grown from 40 fellows in 2018 to this year we have 320 high school fellows.

And so with that growth comes a lot more volunteers and mentors and the need to be able to train them efficiently.