The Welsh Wire: Von Washington Jr. and Sarah Klerk, The Kalamazoo Promise

The Kalamazoo Promise pays for up to four years of college tuition and fees for every student who graduates from Kalamazoo Public Schools. It’s a tremendous resource for the Kalamazoo community but also for the business sector that’s concerned about future workforce access.

“We just saw some data that said that Kalamazoo was losing Millennial population faster than a good portion of the state, and we don’t want that,” says Von Washington Jr., Executive Director of Community Relations for The Kalamazoo Promise. “Now, one of the beauties of the scholarship for anybody who is skeptical about whether a scholarship will keep people living somewhere and or moving in, it did that effectively in Kalamazoo to the tune of about a thousand students came into this school district.”

Listen to Sheri’s entire interview with Von Washington Jr. and Sarah Klerk

Subscribe to The Welsh Wire podcast on iTunes for additional informative, entertaining interviews with west Michigan business leaders.