When junior Alex first joined Breakthrough, he thought he understood what the program was for.

“I always thought that Breakthrough was just college, college, college. But as I slowly got more into Breakthrough, I learned that there’s definitely more steps before college is the main focus… They make sure that you’re in a good place for your life—emotionally, physically.”

Those steps are where AmeriCorps members spend most of their time. Alex’s future aspirations and interests span professional soccer, criminal justice, engineering, and business—potential paths that require not only preparation, but guidance. As a first-generation student, there is no inherited roadmap for how to sequence those decisions or weigh tradeoffs. “Breakthrough has helped me navigate those goals step by step,” Alex says.

Alex’s journey has been shaped by ambition, uncertainty, and responsibility—not just to himself, but to the family that raised him. Much of his drive comes from home: from his older sister, who paved the way as the first in the family to go to college and now works in city government, to his mother, who is employed as a housekeeper. When Alex reflects on his family, he doesn’t talk about pressure: he talks about pride.

“My mom has been probably my main motivation for doing a lot of things. She’s not really the type of person to get on me about my grades or things like that, but… just knowing that she’s proud of me for the work and all I’ve accomplished, it makes me really happy… I feel like I do it for her.”

But motivation alone does not organize deadlines, clarify requirements, or relieve the quiet pressure of not wanting to get it wrong. That is where Breakthrough—and AmeriCorps members like Jacobo—enter Alex’s life in a practical, sustained way.

“There’s definitely a lot of preparation and organization, which especially in this point in my life is something that is key to moving on to college,” says Alex. “If I didn’t have someone like Jacobo helping me with those little details, I would likely not be in a good place. I’d be very lost, very unorganized, stressed. But having him, I feel prepared for everything.”

This is what long-term advising looks like when it works: not narrowing possibility, but teaching students how to carry it. Over time, that preparation becomes something deeper than logistics. 

“Breakthrough has definitely helped me set my standards high and keep them high… Breakthrough taught me that school should be a place to learn, a place to have fun, but overall, a place where you start to find out who you really are,” Alex says.

Anthony Powell embodies AmeriCorps’ capacity to unlock human potential at any age. Wearing his AmeriCorps shirt with unmistakable pride, Anthony’s journey from oil refineries to mental health specialist reveals the program’s transformative power. At age 60, after massive layoffs at the University of Houston Downtown where he was pursuing his master’s degree, a friend’s suggestion to rejoin AmeriCorps seemed almost too convenient to be real.

When Sewa AmeriCorps Program Director Carole Juárez called the next day, Anthony’s disbelief was palpable: “Right now it’s not the time to give me a prank call…You called me the next day, and when you called me, you asked me to come into your program in mental health, and I’m studying mental health. This can’t happen that fast.”

But it was real, and Anthony’s AmeriCorps experience has taught him what he calls the art of becoming “subtle”—a word he uses with the precision of someone who has discovered its deeper meaning rooted in humility and openness. “Subtle means accepting and understanding what you’re doing in the position. The situation where you’re at is much more than just where you’re at.”

This subtlety manifests in Anthony’s work with children like Hadisa. His approach combines practical mental health tools with genuine connection. “He tells us about what you can do so you can stay calm,” Hadisa explains. “He said if you are emotional, you can just take deep breaths and you can calm down.”

The impact is immediately visible in Hadisa’s transformed mornings. Where she once felt “tired” and resistant to interaction, Anthony’s guidance helped her become more open as only teenage girls can be: “When I wake up, I let people talk to me and stuff.”

For Amber, the motivation runs deeper than job description. When her father passed away last year, she found herself translating medical jargon for her family, filtering complex information through her nascent nursing knowledge to help them make peace with an impossible situation.

“I was able, for us all as a family, to make the right decision for my dad because ultimately his status was not going to change, but it helped to provide that additional information for them to have some kind of peace with what was going on,” she recalls.

That experience of advocacy born from anguish now extends to her uncle in rural Louisiana, where resources are scarce, and to countless patients who find in Amber someone who understands that healthcare’s greatest barriers aren’t always medical—they’re human.

This shared experience creates authentic connections that traditional healthcare models often miss. “One of the good things about the AmeriCorps members is that they’re able to connect a lot more to our patients as well, because some of the AmeriCorps members have also had these challenges,” Kevin notes.

Before she ever stepped into the Imagine Art studio, Kathryn Schulze was learning how to serve—not in a classroom, but at the grocery store and in strangers’ living rooms, watching her mother offer kindness to women in crisis.

“My mom basically helped women in crisis pregnancies,” Kathryn said. “She would go to the grocery store with them and help them use their SNAP benefits… We would go and collect clothes for them or literally just anything else they needed.”

Even as a child folding donated clothes or tagging along on shopping trips, Kathryn sensed the quiet power of those small, faithful gestures. “It was really cool getting to meet the people that she was working with… Seeing my mom serving the community, it taught me that it’s about the connection and building those personal relationships and seeing the confidence just grow. Feeling loved and cared about is what really made the big difference.”

So when Kathryn found herself unsure of her path after college—her sociology degree in hand and art still just a personal outlet—it was that early imprint of service that guided her toward AmeriCorps. “I always knew I wanted to do something helping a community,” she said. “I had no idea that I could incorporate art into that… AmeriCorps had the perfect mesh of those.”

What she found at Imagine Art wasn’t just a job, but a place that would shape her voice, confidence, and future.

“The artists here have taught me to be more brave with my work and just to take risks,” she said. “I’m inspired by them literally every single day.” That inspiration has spilled into her personal art practice—prompting her to participate in art markets, receive commissions, and even show in galleries. “If I wasn’t working here, I don’t think I’d be nearly close to where I am now in my personal practice,” she said. “Working here has just jump-started everything for me.”

Beyond technical skills, Kathryn speaks of something more essential. “It’s really taught me to trust myself,” she said. “Now I feel like I second-guess less… I’m just trusting that I can do this, and I’m going to try this. If that doesn’t work, that’s fine—I’ll try the next thing.”