War on Poverty Story: Educational Grants Opened Doors for a Former Farm Worker

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty this year, The Chronicle asked readers to submit stories about how the effort affected their careers. Diana Bermudez shared her story.

The War on Poverty was not a single strategy but the convergence of several strategies that opened opportunity and access to health, education, housing, employment, and financial services. It helped me in two significant ways:

First, the educational grants that I received made a university education possible, resulting in undergraduate and graduate degrees from two University of California campuses. Financial aid in the late 1960s and through the 1970s helped level the playing field for ethnic minority students who excelled in school but had few paths available to higher education. It is not an exaggeration to say that financial aid alone changed the lives of an entire generation of former farm workers like me.

Second, because the War on Poverty was part and parcel of our nation’s civil-rights movement and struggles for justice and equality, it inspired me to pursue professions that worked toward these same goals. I became a public-health advocate and planner, a manager and an executive in a community development corporation, a program officer in two foundations, and now a consultant in philanthropy. Over the course of my career, I have met many other professionals—lawyers, doctors, judges, elected officials, managers, and social workers—from rural and urban America—who were similarly inspired.

Indeed, timing is everything. I am grateful for having grown up during the War on Poverty. Yet the new social and economic order in our country, and around the globe for that matter, has rendered its work far from done.

Diana Bermudez is a philanthropy consultant in Berkeley, Calif.

How has the War on Poverty influenced your career? Send your story to editor@philanthropy.com

See all of our coverage timed to the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty in this special section.