My name is Oscar Paz

My journey began in the spring of 2008, my junior year of high school. 

I was in line to pay for my Advanced Placement exams when I learned that some of my classmates would not be taking theirs because they could not afford the fee. 

I spent the summer researching the benefits of the AP curriculum and during my senior year I launched a fundraising initiative through a club I had started, Dollars For Students, whose purpose was to assist students with AP exam, SAT and college application fees. 

While I was unsuccessful in fundraising to assist my classmates, that experience put me on the path that I am on today.  

Following my high school graduation, I spent 8 years writing letters to organizations, sharing my thesis, asking for support and receiving responses that I wasn’t set up properly to receive contributions. 

I felt defeated. 

I wrote to a number of University professors to ask what I might be doing wrong and ask for advice. 

I received a message from a professor who encouraged me to shift my focus to assist all students, not just those in AP courses. 

From 2017 through 2020, I reviewed available resources, read up on education economics and the impact that it has on nations and their local communities.  

After speaking with education professionals including high school guidance counselors, teachers, admissions counselors and athletics coaches at the high school and college level, I learned that students are missing opportunities to build their futures because they are not aware of their existence. 

Having read reports of serious staff shortages in fields such as education and healthcare, plus the lack of qualified candidates for private sector organizations, it was surprising to hear “Where will the next generation of professionals come from?”

The solution is simple: Let students know that resources exist. 

Free Dot Edu is my first initiative because at the very least, students should know of existing tools to help them build brighter futures for themselves and their communities, regardless of their career paths of interest. 

While it would have been easy to simply share links of existing databases, I wanted to write a guide that sat with each student to not only ask them where they are interested in going, but make sure they do not feel intimidated and walk them through each step of their journey, helping them progress at their own pace. 

Even if a student only visits this website one time to download the report, it was written as a reference that they can use throughout their career, from earning admission to a college degree program through advancing their career and building their legacy of helping the next generation.  

The Oscar Paz Institute is an economic development think tank creating free tools to assist students. 

I get to spend the rest of my career helping students build their careers, their communities and their futures. 

The Oscar Paz Institute will assist local communities with their neighborhood improvement efforts by sharing resources that can be used for their initiatives to improve literacy, graduation and employment rates. 

Thank you for touring this platform and learning about Free Dot Edu and The Oscar Paz Institute.

I invite you to share this initiative with the students of your community.

As you continue your own efforts of improving your neighborhood, please use the Free Dot Edu report as a reference to share college databases and skills development programs as part of your literacy initiatives.