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BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS U of W president Lloyd Axworthy (left), Shirley Delorme-Russell and MLA Kevin Chief say the program helps end the cycle of poverty for some foster kids.

Ten kids in care will have their tuition waived in September and all their living expenses paid under a pilot program announced Thursday at the University of Winnipeg.

The scholarships mean some kids get a ticket out of poverty, said a former foster kid, now a mom with two children.

At an announcement for the program, Shirley Delorme-Russell said she was overwhelmed with emotion.

Her voice breaking, she stared into the eyes of dignitaries from University of Winnipeg's president and vice-chancellor Lloyd Axworthy to NDP cabinet minister Kevin Chief and an array of child-welfare officials, and thanked them one by one.

"Good job. Good job. Good job you've done," Delorme-Russell said.

There were tears in her eyes afterward as Delorme-Russell described the child-welfare system she grew up in.

She worked for a decade after high school before she could afford to attend university, because there was no help for her -- a former foster kid and a Métis-Ojibway teenager in Winnipeg in the 1990s.

"I knew I was going to university but I didn't know when and I didn't know how. When I was in high school, I was told, 'That's it. Nice to know you. But you turn 18 in a couple of months and we have to figure out how to get you on assisted living,' " she said.

The province's 9,500 kids in foster care remain in the child-welfare system until they turn 18.

"What this means is there is someone out there helping us. I would have gone straight to university when I was 17 instead of waiting until I was 28," said Delorme-Russell, who went on to become the cultural educator at the Manitoba Métis Federation's Louis Riel Institute once she earned her teaching degree in 2010.

"We are very pleased to change that reality for children in care," said Axworthy. "It will eliminate a major barrier and provide a major incentive and this is one way of showing the university really does care."

Axworthy said he believes this is the first program of its kind in Canada.

"One of the missions of the university is to see how we can take down the doors and open the windows to make sure education is for everyone."

The province already supports foster kids with education plans nailed down for their future, after age 18. But the extension of care is a little-known and relatively recent provision in child-welfare policies. It covered 50 students the first year it was offered in 2003. Last year, it covered 400 students earning high school diplomas, trades, technical and community college diplomas and universities.

About five per cent of foster kids attend university or college in Manitoba.

Kevin Chief, who grew up facing hardship in the North End, said the partnership will have a ripple effect for kids.

"This enhances the transition program we have in place and I don't think there is any additional cost to the province," the province's minister for children and youth opportunities said.

More importantly, Chief said this program sends a clear signal to change old attitudes that only the province is responsible for the care and education of kids without parents.

"What it does do for a young person who's facing hardship, is you start to look at those kids differently. You tell them: 'If you don't do this, you're not going to be able to take advantage of the potential to go to university. If you don't stay in school, how are you going to go to university for free?'" Chief said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca