Liolet Soto-Heredia ignored the emails from the Fostering Lions Program she began receiving as soon as she’d committed to Penn State Schuylkill’s nursing program. “I thought it would be a club with a lot of foster kids in it,” she says. “When I got the final reminder, I thought, ‘OK, maybe this will be a good thing,’ so I finally accepted.”
It was one of the best decisions Soto-Heredia has made during her time at Penn State. Meeting other students who have come up through the foster care system has been beneficial, she says, and the knowledge she’s gained through program assistant Cheri Hillard’s supper and seminars has been of great use—not just to Soto-Heredia, but to others in her circles, including students who come to Schuylkill’s financial aid office, where she works part time, to ask for help with filling out FAFSA forms and finding sources of funding to help them through college.
But Soto-Heredia, now in her third year at Schuylkill, mostly credits the FLP, and Hillard, with helping her become even more independent. “I’ve always been a very resourceful person, and unlike many kids who’ve been in foster care, I’m very independent and able to figure things out on my own,” she says. “There’s a hit-or-miss with foster care that you could come out needing a lot of outside help, or you could come out like me. Cheri’s really good at supporting the kids that need a lot of help, and she encouraged me to be more independent, to use my social skills to navigate college. I told her at one point that I didn’t like Schuylkill because it is kind of small. Cheri said, ‘Get out there and explore before you actually call it quits.’”
Soto-Heredia, who went into foster care at the age of 15 after an altercation with her father, considers herself lucky to have been placed with a supportive family—and to have gone to a small high school in Greencastle, Pa., with a strong focus on academics and college preparation. The support she received there set her up well for the rigors of university academics and also helped her connect with financial aid sources, and secure a scholarship from the Lenfest Scholars Foundation, before she started at Penn State.
