Alexandria Ware wants to give back. A graduate student at Oklahoma State University, the Wichita, Kansas native is working towards a law degree that will ultimately help those within the foster care system. Last year, she graduated from Kansas State University with a B.S. in Family Studies and Human Services and a minor in Conflict Analysis and Trauma Studies. As a 1,000 Dreams Fund Fall 2017 Scholarship recipient, she hopes to study the foster system—which she has personally experienced–and bring greater awareness to social work.

What is your professional dream?

Foster care is a forgotten community of individuals. I would like to provide insight as an individual who has successfully gone through the foster care system and help bring awareness and understanding to social workers to aid in their work with other foster care children. I feel that I can provide insight to those foster kids who are going through the system and provide ways we can help these children become successful adults.

My educational goal is to get my J.D, but I haven’t figured out what my specialty will be. Currently, I am attending Oklahoma State University pursuing my Masters of Science in Development and Family Science.

How will you use the 1,000 Dreams Scholarship?

I will be able to finish my last year without any worries or concerns over the small issues.

How is this helping you get closer to your dream? 

As an individual who grew up in the foster care system, I feel the need to establish a center that will allow children in foster care to have access to tutoring, mentoring, college admissions assistance and making the transition from childhood to adulthood. The center could help with job searching skills and host seminars to develop their individual skills. My goal is to help all the children in the foster care system become fully functional adults, who can independently take care of themselves.

​What advice do you have for other young women looking to go for their dreams?

Keep chasing your dream! Yeah, there will be some setbacks but once you reach the top you will see that the journey is worth it.

​Any setbacks? How did you get around them? 

Remember, life’s roughest storms prove the strength of our anchors.

What’s next for you? What is your next goal?

I don’t believe that you are just working on one goal at a time. My next goal is to get into law school, so I will continue to work towards that while accomplishing the smaller ones.