Formerly Homeless Student Starts Nonprofit to Help His Peers Get to College

Nineteen-year-old New York City student Orayne Williams knows a lot about how to avoid becoming a statistic. Last year Williams, who was abandoned by his family when he was 12 and spent his teen years living in homeless shelters, managed to graduate from high school with honors and enrolled at Manhattanville College on a full scholarship. His campus dormitory was his first non-shelter home in years.

Last November, he founded a new nonprofit, the Progressive People Movement Inc., which hopes to help at-risk "youth break free from the cycles of homelessness, incarceration, poverty and failure."