A prestigious Cambridge University college has announced a scheme to encourage Hackney pupils to apply to study with them.
In what it describes as a “pioneering move”, Homerton College, Cambridge – alma mater of Oscar winner Olivia Colman and poet laureate Dame Carol Ann Duffy among others – launched the Homerton for Homerton initiative on 13 March.
“We’re trying to inspire the young people of Hackney to show them that Cambridge can be a place for them, if they get their grades and they want to go in that direction,” Lester Holloway, a college spokesperson, told Hackney Post.
“It’s about putting something back into the community we have come from.”
Homerton College was originally founded in Hackney in 1768 but relocated to Cambridge 127 years later.
Now, the college hopes to reconnect with its East London roots, by providing £25,000 in funding for the Homerton for Homerton project.
The scheme is divided into three parts. There will be an immersive STEM activity delivered to 3,000 Hackney school children, which includes the type of puzzle-solving that Mr Holloway said the Cambridge admissions team are looking for.
Over Easter, current Homerton College students will complete placements with Hackney charities that help disadvantaged youth. The third part of the scheme involves taking up to 250 Hackney schoolchildren to Cambridge for tours of the college.
“Even pupils that are predicted A*s, don’t always get the right advice and encouragement to aim high when it comes to choice of university and future careers,” said Mr Holloway. “We are trying to reconnect our institution with Hackney youth.”
Brandon Asenso-Boateng, a first-year Human Social and Political Sciences student at Homerton College, said: “Learning that the college was founded in the same Hackney community I grew up in made Cambridge feel far more connected to my own story.
“That shared history helped me see the university as a place I could belong to and gave me the confidence to apply.”
The scheme is confirmed to run for the next year, but Mr Holloway said it is hoped the scheme will continue “for the foreseeable future”.
