MollyBeth Malcolm, executive vice president for campus operations and public affairs at Austin Community College, said she reads the Statesman s Season for Caring program stories every year when they come out the Sunday after Thanksgiving. She keeps an eye on how ACC might be able to help.
This year, she honed in on two Season for Caring families and started working with them to help them realize their education goals, including how to find funding.
One of the people ACC is working with is 39-year-old LaChantia Anderson. She has been trying to get into computer coding since she was living in a motel in San Diego in 2016. Someone gave her a laptop, and she would sit in a coffee shop using the shop s WiFi to teach herself coding. Through years of being homeless on and off, she kept pursuing that dream.