By Patricia L. Brennan

For Sangeeta Bhagwandeen, life has come full circle.

Born on the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, Bhagwandeen was nine years old when her family moved to the United States. Neither of her parents graduated high school, yet education was a priority growing up, she says. In middle school, Bhagwandeen applied for and received a scholarship from the Hillsborough Education Foundation to attend Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida.

As part of the scholarship program, Bhagwandeen was assigned a mentor. Over the course of the relationship, the bonds that formed served to help guide Bhagwandeen socially, emotionally, and academically and sparked the motivation she needed to stay on track with her higher education goals. After graduating high school, Bhagwandeen entered Hillsborough Community College and later attended the University of South Florida. In 2009, she graduated with a Bachelors of Science degree in Elementary Education.

Today, Bhagwandeen is a first-grade teacher at Mort Elementary School. She also is giving back—as a mentor—to help another young student pursue the same dreams that she was able to fulfill because someone once believed in her potential.

“Having an adult who put their faith, trust and investment in my life made all the difference in my future,” says Bhagwandeen. “My parents didn’t go to college; they had no idea about financial aid or the classes you needed to take to get there. My mentor did and she was always there to tell me that I could make it, to believe in myself and pursue my dreams no matter what.

“That encouragement is what compelled me to make a commitment to become a mentor,” she adds. “It’s about paying it forward and giving back to someone else.”

Bhagwandeen’s story speaks to the possibilities of what can ultimately transpire when organizations and people unite for a common purpose. The Hillsborough Education Foundation, which provided the scholarship and mentoring opportunity that initially put Bhagwandeen on the path to college, is a member of the KH2GO Florida Network. KH2GO Florida is one of 16 state KH2GO networks whose members collectively advocate components of KH2GO, an effort launched in 2007 by Lumina Foundation for Education, the American Council on Education, the Advertising Council to educate young people, especially low-income students, minorities and first generation students, about the steps needed to pursue their higher education dreams.

Today, the KH2GO program includes a national network of college access professionals who work together to help students access information about preparing for college and the steps they must take to get there.

A core component of KH2GO network model is the KH2GO Learning Community (KLC). The KLC provides an on-going forum for KH2GO stakeholders to share ideas, exchange information and create opportunities that will help the KH2GO networks confront college preparation, access and success challenges in their region or state and make the changes necessary to improve.

Members of the KLC include national KH2GO partners, technical assistance and evaluation intermediaries, KH2GO state and regional networks, participating Local Education Funds (LEFs), and other organizations. Each believes in the premise of KH2GO and shares a commitment to work collaboratively to prepare more students for higher education success.

“The idea with the KLC is that the KH2GO sites are all working toward similar goals, so the Learning Community enables KH2GO partners to learn together—from each other and with each other—along the way,” explains Maud Abeel, Senior Program Officer & Deputy Director of the Academy of Educational Development (AED). AED, along with the Public Education Network (PEN) spearheads the technical assistance and capacity building efforts for the KH2GO states and regions as they build their KH2GO networks and partnerships.

The first KLC meeting was held in Indianapolis in 2008. Since then, three other KLC meetings have brought together KH2GO stakeholders from across the country to share individual stories related to their networks and partnerships. At the same time, participants are there to gain a better understanding of the strategies and opportunities that will ultimately lead to a broader, sustainable college access network that can amplify on-the-ground results.

In addition to the bi-annual gatherings, the KLC uses teleconferences, Webexes, and social media tools to help the KH2GO networks and partners collaborate with each other. The efforts not only help guide the work of KH2GO, but also serve to advance Lumina’s broader goal of increasing higher education attainment to 60 percent by the year 2025.

“The KLC operates much like a GPS system,” explains Jim Applegate, Vice President, Lumina Foundation. “It helps the KH2GO networks and their members gain a better understanding of KH2GO and their role in it. Just as important, the KLC provides opportunities to identify promising practices and programs that, ultimately, will better serve students.”

By design, the KLC is not constructed as a typical conference or summit. Rather, it is designed to act as an “anchor” that facilitates the work of the KH2GO networks. Abeel explains:

“The [KH2GO] sites are not just looking to the KLC to give them the answer or deliver a presentation that’s going to provide a cookie-cutter approach to something. They really are being asked to become active learners—to help define their learning needs and then work collaboratively to find resolutions that will meet those needs,” Abeel says.

KH2GO Ning: Connecting National Challenges With Local Solutions

Helping to drive the collaboration and interdependence among the 16 KH2GO networks is a social media tool called Ning. Founded in 2004 by Web innovators Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, Ning provides a platform to allow users to create and manage their own social networks. Today, more than 90 million people visit Ning sites monthly. A total of 2.5 million Ning networks have been created.

The KH2GO Ning network was launched in 2008 as a way to provide KH2GO members and partner organizations with online opportunities to dialogue with each other, post materials and videos and share insight about their individual KH2GO networks and experiences.

Since its launch, the KH2GO Ning has served as a campaign Facebook and collaborative sharing space for an online community of individuals. The wisdom and collective creativity gleaned from the online experiences of network members also serves to help individuals and organizations avoid replicating plans or programs as they tackle college access efforts in their individual communities.

Ning’s utility as a collaborative tool does not end at the national level, however. Several states, including Montana, Wisconsin, Washington, and Southern California, have created their own KH2GO Ning networks. Other KH2GO participants are applying ideas garnered from the national KH2GO Ning to advance a policy agenda in their state.

The KH2GO Ning currently has 352 members. The goal moving forward is to increase the number of “active participants” through avenues that will more effectively engage KH2GO network members to communicate and share with one another, according to Louie Herr, manager of the KH2GO Ning. As part of the strategy to offer increased value to the KH2GO network, the KH2GO Ning recently introduced an effort called “One A Month.” Coordinated by AED/PEN, the initiative entails a monthly posting about relevant college access and success news that is accompanied by a commentary and assessment on how the information could potentially guide the work of KH2GO.

What Has Been Learned?

For meaningful collaboration to occur within any type of formal learning community, a system must be in place to evaluate what’s been gained as a result of the community’s existence and whether the strategies and processes of that community are achieving results. To answer those questions, the Censeo Group of Hinckley, Ohio, is preparing an evaluation of the KLC and of another learning community associated with Making Opportunity Affordable.

According to Tania Jarosewich, President of Censeo, her team currently is collecting various data from KLC participants, conducting face-to-face interviews with KH2GO participants and reviewing analytics relating to the KH2GO Ning. A formal report will be presented at the next KLC meeting in July 2010.

Ultimately, the findings developed will not only provide insight on lessons learned for members of the KLC, but also paint a clearer picture of how learning communities themselves can help build capacity for organizations to work collectively to advance their college preparation, access and success goals.

“There is so much value in KLC,” notes Alison De Lucca, director of SoCal CAN. “The knowledge that is shared when colleagues meet face-to-face during the KLC meetings is tremendous. Even more fascinating, however, is how these conversations continue long after the meetings are over. It’s the conversations that happen in person and in the hallways that build the cohesiveness necessary among the KH2GO networks to make a real difference.”

Lumina’s Applegate echoes those sentiments, adding: “The combined voice is indeed much more powerful than a separate voice. We want these networks to be the voice for kids.”

Patricia L. Brennan is an Indianapolis-based writer and editor with nearly two decades of communications experience related to education.