At the café in the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory, young people, ages 16 to 24, spend the summer cooking, baking and welcoming customers. Down the street and around the corner, they're helping out in a recording studio or at the shoe repair shop.

Nwando Ofokansi just finished looking over a stack of college essays. It's for "her kids," she says. They may not be technically a part of her family tree, but by the time she's seen them through the Sure Track to College program in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, they feel like family. 

She's known some of them through the after-school College Ready Communities Program, run by NeighborWorks Blackstone River Valley (NWBRV), since they were in kindergarten.