The students gather at one of their houses each Monday afternoon in the summer, chatting with their friends and fellow scholarship recipients as they make the bracelets that will earn them vitally needed cash for when they enter college in the fall.
The eight employees of Threads, each a 2012 Cesar Chavez High School graduate and a recipient of the Shine Scholarship, are the first batch of at-risk students to receive college aid from ASU alumna Ashley LeMieux's The Shine Project.
LeMieux, who graduated with a degree in English in 2011, met some of these students while serving an internship as a tutor at Cesar Chavez her senior year.
"I saw that they were really smart but needed mentors," LeMieux said. "I wanted to create something that would help them reach their full potential."
LeMieux earned a livable income from advertising on her personal blog, and she began recruiting her readers and nearby businesses to fundraise for scholarships for these students. They raised $10,000 and awarded 8 students with scholarships between $500 and $2,500.
Vanessa Borunda, who will begin studying biology at ASU in the fall, plans to use the $700 she received to help buy textbooks and school supplies.
"Where I'm from, in South Phoenix, people don't believe in us," Borunda said. "Ashley gave us hope that we could do better."
Although the scholarships were able to provide these high school seniors with needed funds, LeMieux thought more could be done. She began employing several of the students at Threads, a bracelet-making company that officially launched Wednesday.
The employees are paid per bracelet made, making between $10 and $14 an hour. The bracelets are mainly sold online for $10 to $25 each, but LeMieux plans to begin selling them in Arizona boutiques and department stores soon.
Luis Perez, a sports business freshman at Grand Canyon University, said the scholarship and the work at Threads were a blessing from God.
"I was so thankful to get $2,000," he said. "It gave me the motivation to keep working at going to school without worrying about the price."
He said he also enjoys making the bracelets, despite some teasing from friends and family about doing a "girly" job.
"No lie, my sister makes fun of me and says it's a girly thing," he said. "I just tell her it's for a good cause."
Mary Casas, a South Mountain Community College business management freshman, said she enjoyed the crafts aspect of her work at Threads.
"I work at Wells Fargo now too, and this is definitely different," she said. "It's more fun; Ashley's our boss but we can still talk to her. It's a nice little side job."
Casas said Threads also appealed to her because it helps her remain in contact with people she was close to in high school. Many of the employees were participants in the same college preparatory program, AVID (Advancing Via Individual Determination).
"After high school, it's pretty common to not keep in touch," she said. "But now we meet every Monday, and it's good to be around the kids I've known for a long time."
LeMieux hopes to expand the scholarship program to more Arizona schools and hire more Threads employees in the next year.
Reach the reporter at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
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