In Rosemead and Santa Fe Springs, California Project Avanzando---advancing in Spanish---is preparing recent immigrants to take the General Educational Degree (GED) Exams and helping them to escape lives defined by unsteady employment and poverty wages. The program offers its students free transportation, child care and college counseling to encourage them to take three to five months worth of high school classes, after which they take the GED exam. Project Avanzando has graduated forty-two students since it first started in January 2001---a third of whom have gone on to community college---and is one of only a few such programs in Southern California.
See "Program Helps Migrant Workers Earn a GED", MILTON CARRERO GALARZA, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2002