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Laurel resident Joseph Fisher knows what it's like to be the first person in the family to go to college. Fisher, who grew up in public housing in southeast Washington, D.C., said he never even thought about pursuing higher education until a track coach mentioned the possibility during his junior year of high school.

"I didn't think I could go," he said. "I didn't think I was good enough to go."

Years later, those feelings of inadequacy and helplessness made Fisher want to reach out to low- and middle-income youth and help them realize college is within their reach. First Generation College Bound, a Laurel-based program he founded in 1990, celebrated its 20th anniversary Wednesday at an event at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Fisher, 57, started First Generation College Bound from the basement of his home in Montpelier Woods. During the program's first year, he knocked on 300 doors in Kimberly Gardens, a Laurel housing development, to recruit students for an afterschool homework club.

Over the years, Fisher, a 33-year teaching veteran who currently works in Howard County, expanded FGCB to include college-prep workshops and "college access programs" at Laurel High School and Potomac High School in Oxon Hill. Both the workshops and the in-school outreach programs aim to connect students to financial aid and increase their awareness of the various steps in the college application process.

"The money is there for our kids to go to college," Fisher said. "We just have to keep them focused academically and ... on track to complete the paperwork to get it done."

In the past 20 years, FGCB has helped more than 700 children attend college. Looking ahead, the organization aims to expand even further and provide services to more than 1,800 students by 2012.

Laurel resident Tiwana Smith, 27, began attending FGCB sessions at Laurel High School when she was 14 and went on to receive both an undergraduate degree and a master's in criminology from the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.

Smith said the organization is beneficial because it makes low-income youth aware of opportunities for need-based financial aid. She said many of her peers from Laurel High School also attended college but several ended up dropping out because they could not afford to continue.

"Working with the program and working with Mr. Fisher helps you realize ... what you can get if you come from a low-income family," she said. "I had the majority of my years paid for without loans."

Largo resident Dayvon Anderson, another Laurel High graduate and former FGCB participant, earned an undergraduate degree in economics last month from Morehouse College in Atlanta. When Anderson, 21, began attending Fisher's homework club in the third grade, he didn't think college was a possibility. Two years later, however, Anderson said he decided he was definitely going to college, and even though he attended school hundreds of miles from home, he never thought about quitting.

"There was no second-guessing in my mind," he said. "I really wanted to be there."