For students trying to find a way to pay for college, recent news has been bleak: state funding for the UW will be cut, tuition will likely increase, endowment funds are losing money.

But thanks to the UW Dream Project, incoming students can get the help they need when it comes to achieving the dream of attending college.

Founded in 2003 by UW alumnus Alula Asfaw, the Dream Project started out as a home-grown operation to help low-income and first-generation high-school students apply for colleges and eventually attend college, according to the project’s Web site.

It has been expanding ever since, adding schools, students and mentors.

In 2007, the Dream Project gave out a scholarship of its own for the first time.

This year, it will give a $1,000 scholarship to 11 high-school students in the program.

Although many programs are seeing funds getting cut and facing the possibility of reductions, the Dream Project is expanding.

“We’ve received a grant to fund our operations,” said Brukab Sisay, a member of the Dream Project steering committee who is in charge of expansion. “And through that [grant], we are obligated to expand to another school.”

When that school is chosen, it will be the eighth high school the Dream Project serves.

What is different now is that the Dream Project is not only expanding its boundaries, it’s spreading its ideas.

A transferring Dream Project member took the concept to UW Bothell, and the group has achieved enough notability from an article written about their idea in the Chronicle for Higher Education to begin sending representatives to the national stage.

“Last year we presented at the 2008 National Association of College Admissions Counselors,” Sisay said. “And at the end of this month, we’ll be going to Denver to speak at the College Board Western Regional Forum.”

Several schools have already expressed interest in cultivating similar programs, including Georgia Tech and all of the University of Wisconsin’s 18 campuses. These programs would not be directly related to the Dream Project at UW, but would be separate entities founded under the same principles.

The original branch in UW Seattle has always been self-sustaining, funded entirely by donations and grants the mentors themselves apply for. But it is also self-sustaining in the sense that many of the people who now work for the Dream Project were part of it when they were in high school, and many students now enrolled in the program are expressing interest to join it if they are accepted to the UW.

“I’d like to join them,” said Abdi Farah, a senior at Foster High School in Tukwila, Wash. Farah attended a scholarship workshop yesterday afternoon.

“I want to change people’s lives,” Farah said. “I didn’t think I was going to go to UW. I didn’t even want to apply. [The Dream Project] gave me confidence.”

When students become mentors, they apply for grants and donations to fund the group using information learned from their mentors, such as Lim and Peralta.

It’s this business model that will allow the project to keep doing its work for years to come.

“A lot of kids get the idea that if they can’t pay for it … that they’re not worth it,” mentor Rachel Youngblood said. “Something like [the Dream Project] really shows them that if it’s something that they want to do, and if they can get the help to figure out a means to do it, nothing’s impossible.”

Despite an unsure future for many programs at the UW, Lim and his colleagues will keep doing their work exactly as before, with one slight difference:

“We just have to work harder,” Lim said.

Reach contributing writer Morgan Gard at development@dailyuw.com.