Those grants this year totaled $45,000, while about $750,000 has been awarded to more than 300 students since 2000.
The celebration was to recognize students for “their commitment, their training, their education and their futures,” said Natalie Rohlfs, The Future Begins Today’s executive director.
This year’s recipients are studying nursing, science, pharmacy, art, speech pathology, engineering, teaching, business and other fields.
The Last Dollar Grants recipients are first required to apply for all other sources of financial aid and demonstrate unmet financial need for basic tuition, room and board and mandatory fees. Recipients are required to complete 15 hours or more of service within the community for each year a grant is received. This year’s recipients completed more than 400 hours of community service in the community.
“We are extremely lucky that this program cares so much about our current and future successes,” Valeri Gibson, a four -year grant recipient and 2019 Wright State University graduate, told this year’s recipients. “The program offered me help and opportunities that I otherwise might not have had.”
Rohlfs said local resident Pat Robinson’s vision became a reality with the launch of the program in 2000. “It is because of Pat and her husband Thom that the support and community advocacy is what it is today,” she said. Another major supporter has been The Acorn Society of Troy, she said.
The strawberry salsa fundraiser was started several years ago with involvement of Cheryl Cotner, a former Future Begins Today executive director, to raise scholarship dollars through sales at the organization’s booth at the annual Troy Strawberry Festival. Grant recipients, board members and supporters work the festival booth. The salsa also is sold at four area businesses year -round (Bakehouse Bread Co., Winans in downtown Troy, Fulton Farms and Haren’s Market).
Each year, the organization’s program touches more 1,200 students beginning in third grade, Rohlfs said.
Among the organization’s programming are:
- The Future Begins Today Club with weekly mentoring meetings with an adviser who is paid to guide a student and teach life skills and ways to get and keep a job someday.
- Family events
- Homework helper program in which teachers are paid to work with students needing assistance
- Lunch Buddy program that includes monthly meetings on school grounds between community mentors and students for lunch, positive communication and other activities.
- Field trips and outreach activities that involve entire classes and hundreds of students beyond those in the Future Begins Today Clubs. These activities include an Eighth Grade Goes to College program that takes students to an area college and the WACO Museum Experience Trip for sixth graders who visit the Troy aviation museum.
Rohlfs, a Troy High School graduate, has been with the program since October 2015. “I am really proud of being part of something like this that has touched so many lives. We have so many supporters in the community and advocates for us,” she said.
Contact this contributing writer at nancykburr@aol.com
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