by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
Students with student loans might have a way to pay it back and help their community at the same time - if it's not a scam.
Students who apply to the program must pay a $10 fee, which is why the program is questionable to financial aid officials.
Paul Nixon, the deputy communications director at the New Mexico attorney general's office, said although nobody at the office had heard of Student Loan Eliminators, students should be careful when dealing with the organization.
"Attorney General Patricia Madrid always cautions people who are considering offers like this to be extremely skeptical when someone asks for their personal information," Nixon said.
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The program's creator, Carlos Fearn, said he had the best of intentions when he created the program.
"I wanted to create a program that would allow people to help pay off their loans while giving back to their community," Fearn said. "Since so many people already volunteered, I thought it was a perfect compliment to their current lifestyles."
Kathleen O'Keefe, the interim director of UNM's Financial Aid Office, also said she would be suspicious of the offer because it requires an application fee.
"My feeling is that students should be very wary of this organization because they're asking for money to provide a service, and they ask students to submit names of other students they can contact," O'Keefe said.
Valerie Cano, the marketing director of New Mexico Student Loans, said her organization is researching Student Loan Eliminators to find out if it is genuine.
Cano said she contacted the office of the Federal Student Loan Ombudsman for information about Student Loan Eliminators but had not heard back from them as of Monday.
Fearn said he understands the doubts and is confident financial aid organizations will eventually realize Student Loan Eliminators is legitimate.
"It is unfortunate that in this day and time, people have to be skeptical of everything," Fearn said. "If people have to check us out or need confirmation of the organization's mission and truthful existence, they can."
When students apply to the Volunteer Debt Away program, their applications are reviewed and graded. The highest scores each month are accepted into the program, Fearn said.
Students who are not chosen will have their application reviewed monthly for a year at no extra charge, he said.
Once a student gains access into the program, Student Loan Eliminators assigns the student to a nonprofit organization based on the student's abilities and interests, he said.
The number of hours of volunteer work a student does depends on the amount of work needed by the organization. There is no set number of hours a student must work.
After the students work an agreed number of hours, they are given a grant of up to $5,000 from Student Loan Eliminators to help pay off their loans.
Fearn said he is an entrepreneur who has run several businesses and is attempting to run Student Loan Eliminators like a business, although it is a nonprofit organization.
Fearn graduated in 2005 with a large debt from student loans.
The best way to make sure the program became successful was to charge an application fee, Fearn said.
The grant money is supposed to come from donations to the organization. No companies have signed up to do this yet, so application fees are being used to start off the grant money.
Fearn, who is the chief executive officer of Social Innovations Inc., noted that universities are also nonprofit organizations that charge application fees.
Student Loan Eliminators is working with the Better Business Bureau to provide information to anyone with questions about Volunteer Debt Away, Fearn said.
The Better Business Bureau had no records of Volunteer Debt Away, Student Loan Eliminators or Fearn as of Tuesday morning.
Fearn said the program was launched on Jan. 24, so it makes sense that not many people have heard of it.
He said there have been 1,000 applications to the program.
Once Volunteer Debt Away's Web site is up and running, Fearn said, all the information about the organization will be available.
