A Louisiana scholar residing in a homeless shelter overcame his struggles and graduated as valedictorian from his New Orleans highschool this spring.
Elijah Hogan, 19, accepted his diploma as the highest of Walter L. Cohen Excessive Faculty class of 2024 this spring and plans to attend school within the fall.
However it wasn’t straightforward. Hogan overcame years of homelessness, residing in Covenant Home — a shelter serving youth below 22 in New Orleans
He attributes his success to the entire individuals on the shelter and his college who went out of their approach to assist him excel in addition to his personal onerous work and dedication.
“I’ve those that had been there to assist me get by it. And with out them I wouldn’t have been the place I’m at now, as a valedictorian,” Hogan advised ABC’s Good Morning America.
“As time went on, I began to construct up relationships, needed to meet some great individuals, obtained to know lots of people, in addition to forming relationships and belief with them,” he mentioned.
The brand new graduate completed his senior 12 months with a 3.93 GPA and is certainly one of two valedictorians within the 2024 class at Cohen, a New Orleans constitution college.
His Might twenty fourth commencement speech, he mentioned, was primarily “a thank-you letter to the varsity, to the workers, to the scholars and to their mother and father for serving to us to get previous our faculty years and get us the place we are actually graduating, going off on this planet.”
When he started college, Hogan mentioned he was a nervous teen earlier than he blossomed into the assured younger man he’s as we speak by the robust relationships he constructed there.
He significantly thanked Jana DeCoster, the director of scholar actions at Cohen Excessive Faculty, and Jarkayla Cobb, Hogan’s Rites of Passage case employee at Covenant Home.
Cobb recalled watching Hogan slowly come out of his shell over time since he first arrived on the shelter.
“Being in a homeless shelter is traumatic. No matter you went by to get you right here is traumatic,” Cobb advised Good Morning America.
“He was very shy,” she continued. “He had little or no phrases at first, so it’s simply superior to see how a lot he’s developed and develop into so well-spoken during the last seven or eight months that I’ve been part of his life and simply been in a position to push and encourage him to go after every part that the world has to supply.”
Hogan, an artist, will attend Xavier College of Louisiana this fall, the place he plans to main in graphic design.
The college has supplied him tuition help. To cowl housing prices and different residing bills, Hogan has launched a GoFundMe marketing campaign asking for donations.
He urged others trying to comply with his instance to “maintain your self organized on a few of your training as nicely — as a result of with out your training, you won’t be able to get by the hardships and meet the those that helped you alongside the best way.”
Supply hyperlink
