Defying the Odds

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In 1988, 250 inner city students in Atlanta and nine other U.S. cities were given the opportunity of a lifetime: the Merrill Lynch Foundation promised full scholarships
to the colleges of their choice. All that the kids had to do was graduate from high school and get accepted into college. It sounds simple, but for the first-grade class of thirty kids chosen at Capital View Elementary in southwest Atlanta, the intervening years have been anything but simple. Since 1997, GPB’s Emmy-winning team of Executive Producer Pamela Roberts and Director of Photography Wayne Baumgardner have followed five of these Atlanta students who were given a chance to break free from the inner city... Defying the Odds.

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Producing Defying the Odds – 2008 Update

Four years in the making, Defying the Odds is one of the most ambitious television projects ever undertaken at GPB. Here is a look back as well as an update by its producer, Pamela Roberts.

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