Before he joined the EAGLE Scholars program with the Vickery Meadow Youth Development Foundation, 14-year-old Pray Reh wasn’t thinking about going to college.

“I thought back then that I’d finish high school, get a job and just get by like that,” Pray said.

But at the behest of his parents and a cousin who had graduated from the program, Pray joined it when he started middle school and stuck to it.

Doing so, said the Emmett J. Conrad High School student, is one of the best and most enriching experiences he’s had so far in his life.

Through the program, Pray has learned about careers in engineering and medicine — two fields he’s considering as careers — thanks to the professionals brought in to mentor students.

But more importantly, it’s gotten him and his fellow EAGLE Scholars thinking about how to go from simply wanting careers to actually getting employed by establishing relationships with those mentors that will hopefully come come in handy as the students get older.

Janet Morrison-Lane, director of the EAGLE Scholars program, said it is designed to put students through a variety of classes and training that will hopefully get them in the mindset of getting ready for college.

Pairing EAGLE scholars with mentors is a way to get them thinking early on about the power of networking and building connections that will help them professionally as they look for internship and work opportunities that they may otherwise not have access to.

Morrison-Lane said that about 60 percent of the EAGLE Scholars come from refugee families and that many more are children of immigrants. Most scholars come from working-class families that may fully support the students’ educational goals but don’t have the social and professional connections students from wealthier families might have.

“A lot of them don’t have those connections because their parents aren’t in a lot of those circles,” Morrison-Lane said. “It’s unfortunate that this is the way the world works.”

The program, which mainly serves students from Sam Tasby Middle School and Emmett J. Conrad High School, began in 2007 as a summer program, but added an after-school component as the years went by, Morrison-Lane said.

Now the group meets just about every Thursday at Tasby Middle School in the immigrant- and refugee-rich Vickery Meadow neighborhood.

Teresa Flores, a 25-year-old teacher in the Dallas area, was herself an EAGLE Scholar and now comes back for the weekly meetings.

Flores said that mentorship wasn’t a formal part of the program when she was a student, but the college students who volunteered, as well as Morrison-Lane and Martha Stowe, the Vickery Meadow Youth Foundation's executive director, all took special care to provide mentorship where they could for students.

“That’s when it was most impactful for us. You had someone who cared enough to come back and see your growth and progress,” Flores said. “And now we can offer that now to students whose families may not have strong college backgrounds.”

Pray, whose family is originally from Thailand, said the program has helped him break out of his shell and be more conversational with adults. He said he thanks Valerie Hope, a leadership coach and mentor, for helping him be more comfortable with speaking in public.

Hope — who formerly worked for the Hyatt Hotel Corporation as a talent developer and learning director — has been mentoring EAGLE scholars for about a year and a half.

She said she’s taken students to shadow professionals and tried to teach them about basic professional courtesies like shaking hands, sending thank-you notes and simply following up with people via email.

“What I hope for them is that they know they can go beyond the limitations of their family structures and societal barriers,” Hope said. “I just hope they can see beyond and see themselves as powerful and capable and as amazing as they are.”

Hope, whose own family moved to the U.S. from Panama when she was nine years old, said that establishing social connections is hard enough for immigrants. So if she can help students get better footing in the professional world, she said she’ll do what she can.

Sam Tasby Middle School students (from left) Rebecca Cawi Sang, ZamZam Ali, Dar Cuai, and Eismat Ara spend time with Dr. Ashish Sureka, a mentor in the EAGLE Scholars program, on Nov. 21, 2019. (Nitashia Johnson / Special Contributor)

“Social capital is about trying to get your foot in the door rather than just going through a platform online and being more than a resume that’s being searched for keywords,” Hope said.

Morrison-Lane said that what she hopes students learn in their time as EAGLE Scholars is that they have voices and that their voices matter. She added that their voices will be most powerful and most effective once students find themselves in boardrooms making important decisions for their communities.

“Your perspective and who you are matters. If only the white, middle class is speaking for people, they don’t have the perspective of being a refugee or being a Muslim,” Morrison-Lane said. “I want these scholars to know that we need their voices and that they need a seat at the table.”

Pray still has a few years to go before he graduates from high school, but he’s constantly thinking about life after college. He said he wants to learn more about business and entrepreneurship because being a business owner is another career option he’d like to consider.

Finding a career, he said, is about finding the right fit for yourself, adding that he’s grateful for the exposure EAGLE Scholars has provided for him to multiple career options.

“What’s the point of just getting the job if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing?” Pray said.