Power of PEF: How PEF is becoming the Backbone of College Access in Philly
PhillyGoes2College is Powered by the Philadelphia Education Fund, which is celebrating 40 years of supporting students this year. In the weeks leading up to PEF’s June 4 Anniversary Gala, we’ll be sharing stories highlighting its power and impact in empowering Philadelphia students to pursue postsecondary success!
We caught up with Dr. Asia Holden, and she kept circling back to one simple idea about what young people actually need.
“Students deserve to have adults who care about them, who ask them questions and help them think through it. Their brains are not completely formed yet.” Someone with a little more experience, she says, to talk it through. To ask, how might that work out? Is that going to work with the plan you have?
Holden is the executive director of post-secondary readiness at the School District of Philadelphia, and a founding steering committee member of CASE, the College Access and Success Ecosystem. If that sounds like a lot of moving parts, that is exactly the point. CASE exists to make all the moving parts move together.
The idea started in 2018. Plenty of organizations across Philadelphia were already doing college access work, but they were doing it separately. The question was whether the city could galvanize those efforts, bring the partners to one table, and advance a shared vision instead of a scattered one. For a while it was just an idea people kept talking about. Then PEF secured the funding to actually build it, and in 2021 the ecosystem hit the ground.
PEF’s job in CASE has a name. Backbone organization. Everyone at the table is busy with their own day-to-day work, so PEF is the one that coordinates the meetings, brings the partners together, plans the activities and events, and keeps pushing the group to think further. “It’s really fantastic to have a backbone organization who can really ensure that we kind of keep moving forward towards the mark.”
She describes what happens when the partners are actually in the room together. “Something really magical happens.” Ideas and resources get shared. Problems of practice get worked through. People who would otherwise never coordinate start reaching further together than any of them could alone.
That collaboration produces concrete things. The clearest example is a campaign called What’s Your Plan, built by CASE’s On Track High School Graduation Group. It is direct and simple enough to remember. The network put posters in every high school, built resources for schools to be intentional about asking students what comes next, and pushed the question out across social media. The point is to get a student thinking past the school building. What will I do when I leave? What do I need to do now to be ready? And if I am not sure, who do I talk to?
Holden is clear about the stakes. Philadelphia is one of the poorest large cities in the country, and its students face real choices: the workforce, the trades, college. Every one of those is a legitimate path, and as she puts it, every student will end up in a career one way or another. What matters is that students make those choices informed, with a caring adult in the room. “Access is one piece, but the next step is really engagement in the opportunities.”
What excites her most is the alignment. “All of the people getting on the same train to support students in making choices.” She credits PEF for being able to hold that train on the track, because the organization has been doing this for 40 years. “They’ve seen how it started. They’ve seen some shifts and changes, and they understand what our young people need.” An organization, she says, with its ears to the ground and its eyes scanning for what is next.
It comes back to where she started. Caring adults, asking the right questions, helping a young person think it through. Holden wants to keep growing the network so more of those adults are in more of those rooms. “We can just continue to wrap our arms around the young people of Philadelphia, to remind them that they can and that they will.”
That is the power of PEF.
PEF’s 40th Anniversary Gala is on June 4, 2026. It’s one way to stand behind 40 years of this work and help it reach further. Join us: CLICK HERE
