College Bound Project Given Rousing Start

In New York and Kansas City, philanthropists successfully have tested the premise that the promise of a college education can keep many children in school and out of trouble. Los Angeles soon will try this experiment, too--with a twist.

Project College Bound, a new foundation, hopes to inspire inner city seventh-graders with greater educational prospects but it will differ from other programs of its ilk because it will seek the support of a variety of small donors, not just the wealthy, according to organizer Ophelia Long.

The Los Angeles effort also will enlist the city’s entertainment and business communities.

The project got under way Saturday night with a Wiltern Theater benefit, underwritten by the International Society on Hypertension in Blacks. The society, which conducted its fifth annual conference this weekend in Long Beach, underwrote Project College Bound with $60,000.

The program will require participants to sign a pledge to stay off drugs and away from gangs and to avoid pregnancy or impregnating someone, said Long, a hospital administrator with Kaiser Permanente and a charter society member who helped organize the benefit. In exchange, the program will pay for students’ college tuition and “any mentoring or tutoring they may need and expose them to cultural experiences.”

The weekend benefit featured a silent auction followed by a show with performances by actors Marla Gibbs, James Earl Jones, and Cleavon Little; stand-up comedy from Byron Allen; and music by Freda Payne and Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary. The Ambassadors of Compton, a singing and dancing youth group, performed, as did the D.A.R.E. Up With Life singers.