Peninsula Bridge

According to a 2021 article from the Pew Research Center, only 11% of students from the lowest-income quartile earn bachelor’s degrees within six years. For first-generation, low-income students, barriers to college access and completion have lasting implications for their ability to reach full economic potential. Peninsula Bridge recognizes this link between education and long-term career success, and helps students overcome systemic inequities at a critical time in their lives.

Peninsula Bridge equips students to thrive with a holistic, metrics-driven program grounded in long-term, wrap-around support from 4th grade through college graduation. The comprehensive 13+ year program model provides robust academics, socio-emotional learning, mental health counseling, parent education and college and career support. And, because students remain together as a cohort, they contribute to each other’s success. Currently 100% of Peninsula Bridge scholars graduate from high school and matriculate to college, with 97% on track to graduate in 4-6 years.

Sand Hill Foundation has partnered with Peninsula Bridge since 1996 to help create educational opportunity for high-achieving, low-income students. Grants have been provided for the middle school summer program, year-round after-school expansion, participation of the executive director in the Silicon Valley Out-of-School-Time Collaborative from 2010-2016, a merger in 2017, and significant growth capital as high school and college programs were launched.

A recent three-year grant from Sand Hill Foundation is helping Peninsula Bridge to strengthen and scale its successful model—adding school partners in high-need geographies, expanding the mental health wellness program to address a dramatic increase in need, and upleveling its college to career transition support.

Through our long-term partnership, we are elevating the lives of thousands of first-generation students upon college graduation, armed with the personal confidence, social capital and life/work skills to launch a successful future.