Messan Agbossoumonde and Dodji Koudakpo were not yet 10 in 1993, when they and their families fled a war in Togo and crossed that country’s eastern border to take refuge in the republic of Benin. The camp was a dangerous place. Messan’s father died there. The focus was on staying alive.
In 2000, the boys immigrated to the United States. Messan arrived in Syracuse, N.Y., and, after a two-year stay in Texas, Dodji moved to Syracuse as well.
Syracuse, they learned, has problems, too. Crime, drugs, gangs and prostitution challenge the city, particularly in the poorest neighborhoods, including the housing projects known as “the Bricks.” Seduced by the streets, kids drop out of school at an alarming rate. Half of the city’s public-school students don’t make it to 12th grade. Less than 30 percent of African-American males get that far. The odds didn’t bode well for a couple of African immigrants.
The boys got lucky, though. They met Ginny Donohue, founder of On Point for College.
The program is a classic grassroots, church-basement program that started by accident. In the late 1980s, Donohue’s daughter asked her to help a high school friend gain admission to college, and she did. Then two students in a program for chronically homeless students asked her for similar help.
For years Donohue operated her fledgling enterprise out of a black Toyota Camry “that bottomed out because of so many college catalogs in the car,” she recalls. She put 250,000 miles on that vehicle, which became well-known in Syracuse as “the college lady’s car.” Donohue likes to tell of the time that a 6-foot-7 kid stepped in front of her Camry and blocked her path out of the projects. She assumed a car jacking was in progress, but the young man only wanted to ask her if she could help him get into Morrisville State College.
“The word had spread,” she says. In 1999, 10 years after helping her daughter’s friend, Donohue quit her job as a corporate vice president, founded On Point, and became a full-time advocate for inner-city kids who want to attend college. The program turns away no one. Many of the kids it has helped have enrolled in college in spite of significant barriers. Donohue expects to pass a milestone this year: 1,000 college placements.
By the time Dodji and Messan happened along, the program was in full swing. A man from Catholic Charities introduced Messan to Donohue in 2001. She helped the boys with college visits, applications, clothes and rent money. At the time, Dodji and Messan were working 20 to 30 hours a week in retail jobs to pay the rent on their apartment. (Occupancy limitations precluded them from living with their families.)
“Ginny was there,” says Dodji, a rising senior at Syracuse University, where he is majoring in information technology. “She’s like a second mom for us.”
Messan recently graduated from St. Lawrence University, where he majored in French and sociology. He’s thinking about studying law at Syracuse. “A lot of teenagers and people my age really need help, but people don’t know how to take advantage of it,” he says. “Ginny has an answer for every question.”
