State leaders say outreach, language access, and trusted community partnerships remain critical to helping families access CalKIDS scholarships and California’s new DROP privacy platform.
Magazine, Making Money, The Immigrant Experience
In immigrant households across California, college conversations often begin with numbers families cannot afford.
Tuition.
Rent.
Gas.
Groceries.
For many working-class parents, higher education is still viewed as the dream worth sacrificing for, even when the cost feels increasingly out of reach.
In many immigrant families, college is not talked about as a personal achievement.
It is talked about as a family survival plan.
That reality framed this week’s ethnic media briefing hosted by the Office of Community Partnerships and Strategic Communications, where California officials, nonprofit leaders, and community advocates gathered to discuss two state initiatives aimed at expanding access and protection for residents: CalKIDS, a college scholarship and savings program for eligible students, and DROP, California’s new data privacy platform.
Ashley Williams of the Office of Community Partnerships and Strategic Communications opened the forum by emphasizing the state’s effort to expand awareness of critical public resources through partnerships with ethnic and community media outlets. The briefing also included simultaneous interpretation in multiple languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Hmong, Korean, and Tagalog, reflecting the state’s continued focus on language access and equitable outreach.
The briefing focused heavily on CalKIDS, formally known as the California Kids Investment and Development Savings Program, which provides eligible newborns and public school students with scholarship accounts worth up to $1,500 for college or career training.
Officials described CalKIDS as the largest state-led child development account initiative in the nation. Since launching in 2022, the program has established more than 5.6 million accounts statewide, representing more than $2.3 billion invested in California students’ futures.
State officials and community organizations said one of the biggest problems is not eligibility.
It is visibility.
Many immigrant and working-class families simply do not know the accounts already exist in their children’s names.
Speakers included Humphrey Menoxca of the State Treasurer’s Office; Linda Vang of Fresno Immigrant and Refugee Ministries; Samir of the Somali Bantu Association of America; and Tom Kemp, Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency. Throughout the briefing, speakers emphasized that community outreach, multilingual education, privacy protections, and trusted partnerships are critical to helping immigrant and working-class families access state resources safely and confidently.
Menoxca explained that CalKIDS automatically creates scholarship accounts for eligible students, removing many of the barriers families usually face when trying to access educational aid.
Unlike traditional scholarships that require lengthy applications, essays, or competitive selection processes, CalKIDS is designed to meet families where they are.
“The fastest and easiest scholarship for students in California,” he called it during the presentation.
Under the program, children born in California on or after July 1, 2022, automatically qualify for scholarship accounts regardless of household income. Eligible public school students may also qualify through existing state education and assistance data connected to programs such as free and reduced lunch, Medi-Cal, foster care services, or homelessness support systems.
The funds can later be used for tuition, books, supplies, career training, and other approved higher education expenses.
“California is investing in our students long before they arrive on a college campus or at a training program,” State Treasurer Fiona Ma said in a statement released during the briefing. “While we’re helping students cover college and career training expenses like tuition, books, and supplies, we’re also helping ensure families have greater access to educational opportunity.”
Families can check eligibility directly through the CalKIDS website. For public school students, families typically need the student’s Statewide Student Identifier (SSID), date of birth, and county of enrollment. For newborns, parents need the child’s birth registration information. State officials said the eligibility process generally takes less than five minutes to complete.
Officials also emphasized during the briefing that families are not required to provide Social Security numbers to claim CalKIDS funds, a detail advocates say is especially important for immigrant and mixed-status households that may feel hesitant about participating in government-connected programs.
Students can begin accessing the money after graduating from high school and turning 17 years old.
Menoxca also noted that the program recently surpassed 900,000 claimed scholarship accounts statewide, though outreach efforts continue because many eligible families still have not claimed their funds.
State officials also highlighted a new partnership with the California Cradle-to-Career Data System and the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office that identified 40,000 community college students with more than $20 million in available but unclaimed CalKIDS scholarship funding.
For immigrant-serving organizations, the biggest barrier is often not eligibility.
It is awareness.
Too many families still do not know these resources exist. Others assume the programs are not meant for them. Some are hesitant to engage with anything connected to government systems at all, especially in mixed-status households where fear and uncertainty already shape daily decisions.
Linda Vang, project coordinator with Fresno Immigrant and Refugee Ministries, described how her organization has worked with Hmong, Lao, Slavic, Afghan, African, Syrian, and Latino families throughout California’s Central Valley to help parents and students confirm eligibility and claim scholarships.
According to Vang, the organization has already helped thousands of newborns and students secure more than $2 million in scholarship funding through school partnerships, direct outreach, and multilingual assistance.
She shared the story of Cynthia Velasquez, a Fresno State social work student who had been helping other students enroll in CalKIDS before discovering she herself qualified for the scholarship.
Velasquez, who grew up in the rural town of Tranquility, California, later claimed her scholarship and plans to use the funding toward graduate school.
Vang said stories like Cynthia’s demonstrate how many students remain unaware of resources already available to them.
“What makes this story really powerful is that even someone who has actively helped others enroll was unaware of her own eligibility,” Vang said during the briefing.
Samir, youth program manager with the Somali Bantu Association of America in San Diego, described seeing similar reactions among students during outreach efforts at Crawford High School.
Many students, he said, had already assumed college was financially out of reach.
But after learning they qualified for CalKIDS scholarships, students began discussing community colleges, trade schools, majors, and career plans.
Samir said some students initially questioned whether the program was legitimate because they were unfamiliar with receiving direct educational support without hidden conditions.
“That money is all for you,” he recalled telling students during the workshop sessions.
Community organizations said immigrant and refugee families are far more likely to trust programs when information comes through schools, nonprofits, faith spaces, and community leaders who already understand their realities.
That trust matters.
For many immigrant parents, navigating educational systems in America can feel like learning a new language twice—once literally and again culturally. Deadlines, portals, financial aid forms, and scholarship systems often overwhelm families already balancing long work hours, rising costs, and language barriers.
The briefing also highlighted a broader issue facing many working-class and immigrant households: navigating complicated educational systems without clear guidance.
Advocates noted that rising tuition costs and increasing financial pressure on working-class families have made early access to educational support more important than ever, particularly for first-generation college students and immigrant households already balancing economic instability.
The briefing also included discussion of California’s new Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, known as DROP, which allows residents to request the deletion of personal information collected and sold by data brokers.
Tom Kemp, Executive Director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, said the platform was created in response to growing concerns about scams, identity theft, spam calls, and the widespread sale of personal information online.
“Removing your personal information from the businesses that sell it could decrease the risk of identity theft, fraud, spam calls, and hacking attempts,” Kemp said during the briefing.
Kemp emphasized that DROP gives Californians a centralized tool to request deletion of personal information from hundreds of registered data brokers at once, rather than contacting companies individually.
Community advocate Strat Maloma also spoke during the briefing, describing how older adults and vulnerable residents are often overwhelmed by increasingly complicated digital privacy systems while also facing growing risks tied to scams, robocalls, phishing attempts, and identity theft.
Maloma said tools like DROP could help reduce exposure to fraud by giving residents a simpler and more centralized way to limit how personal information is shared and sold online.
Community advocates said the platform could be especially important for immigrant, elderly, and limited-English-speaking communities often targeted by scams, fraud, and identity theft.
Throughout the briefing, advocates returned to the same message repeatedly: resources alone are not enough.
Families need clear information. They need language access. And they need trusted people who can help them navigate systems that too often feel distant or inaccessible.
That is why community-based outreach has become central to CalKIDS enrollment efforts across the state.
For many immigrant and refugee families, the scholarship itself matters.
But so does the message beneath it.
Their children’s futures are worth investing in too.
For more information, visit:
CalKIDS: calkids.org
DROP: privacy.ca.gov/drop
#CalKIDS #ImmigrantFamilies #CollegeAccess #EducationalEquity #FirstGenerationStudents #RefugeeCommunities #CaliforniaResources #PrivacyProtection #FinancialLiteracy #CommunityOutreach
