ORLANDO, Fla. — A nonprofit organization based on IT learning is giving students a leg up in the industry, with tuition-free classes that lead to real world certificates.

What You Need To Know

National nonprofit Per Scholas provides tuition-free IT training to students

Many “learners” have high school diplomas or GED, but graduate from 12-15 week bootcamp with certificates and transferrable skills

Jeremy Garren, who manages the downtown Orlando campus location, said that more than 80% of program graduates work in IT field, one year post graduation

Faith Donaldson is one Per Scholas student who just completed her second certification, “upskilling” to work in cyber security

Per Scholas’ bootcamps last for a course of 12-15 weeks. And per Jeremy Garren, the Managing Director of the Orlando campus, located in a high rise along South Orange Avenue, it’s an opportunity for “learners” to hone their skills, or even “upskill” to transition into higher-wage jobs.

That is precisely what Faith Donaldson did, graduating with her second certificate from Per Scholas in February, this time in cyber security.

“Being in a place where I could get into tech and be a woman of color in tech and that meant so much,” she said, continuing, “Because it’s like, hey, here’s a path that other young women can sit here and look at and say, ‘Faith did it, I can do it too.’”

For many years, the young woman from South Florida was like many of the other “learners” in the program: working jobs without a career, or perhaps direction.

“I was working mornings at Starbucks and nights at Olive Garden. Somebody told me about tech. But I was just like, ‘OK, how do I get into it?’” she recalled. “I had nothing to lose. Like I was working two jobs. I was burnt out… at age 21.”

And when that person mentioned Per Scholas and the notion of tuition-free learning, Donaldson could not wait to tell her biggest supporter: her mother.

All her life, Donaldson looked up to her mother, a single mom raising five brothers and sisters. Donaldson also saw years of setbacks, especially financial struggles, pressing on her hard-working mother, but the woman eventually finding success as a manager at a local grocery store.

“Oh, she means the world. Like, she actually was my backbone throughout this process. Yeah, when times got tough, you know, just leaving my job, going to this program, my mom was supporting me throughout the whole entire thing,” she said. “She could cry in the bathroom, but the next day, my mom was back at it …. seeing somebody get back up with the same strength, the same energy and pushing through.”

It strengthened Donaldson’s resolve to change her own life, push aside fears and enter the program.

According to Garren, funding for Per Scholas comes from a variety of sources, from local partnerships and foundations to national organizations and private individuals. The nonprofit boasts dozens of locations across the country, where students not only learn requisite IT skills, they also expand their soft skills, from interviewing to networking.

In addition, more than 80% of Per Scholas graduates, Garren said, find full-time employment within one year of graduating from the training program.

Seeing “learners” success post-graduation has kept Garren himself motivated to continue the work for the past four years. He relishes ringing a large silver bell hoisted in the lobby of the Orlando campus, signaling that a student has attained a job in the industry.

“I always love to kind of look back and know that, you know, we did have some impact on individuals,” he explained. “We are posed with doing a lot with very little resources, right? And so for us, and for me, to be able to impact individuals in a short amount of time is … why I do what I do.”

For Donaldson, who aims to one day work for the federal government as an analyst, much of why she does what she does is down to her mother, whose faith in the IT professional never wavered.

“She will be taken care of because she has given me everything. She will give me the clothes off her back,” she said of her mother. “So, yeah, she deserves it all.”