Updates and Inspiration from Scholarship Recipients
For inspiration in these challenging times for nonprofits, and everyone else, we reached out to two of our 2020 Scholarship Recipients who are employed by local nonprofits to learn how they have adjusted.
I work for Junior Achievement, an organization that is dedicated to educating and inspiring K-12 students about career exploration, employability/work readiness skills, entrepreneurship and financial literacy. You may have heard of JA BizTown or JA JobSpark – two of the biggest programs for kids. The majority of our programs are taught by local volunteers that go into the classroom to deliver the curriculum. We have been working to adjust our programs to virtual, e-learning opportunities, and are now offering these programs online free of charge to any parent, teacher, or student. We are partnering with local school districts to use our programs as e-learning curriculum for the remainder of the school year and also offering supplements/activities for any parent (who is now also an at-home teacher) to do with their kids as well. We are calling this effort “Project Tomorrows” so kids can spend less time worrying about today and more time planning for their future. We wish that our programs can provide hope and encourage kids to still dream about their futures. For anyone who has kids at home and are looking for educational activities, we have also release a few white papers on how to have discussions with your teens about the financial issues relating to COVID-19.
Kacy Wendling
I am the Program Director at Immigrant Welcome Center. We have been working hard to respond to the COVID-19 crisis with the immigrant community. We are seeing a powerful, collective voice forming in our community to advocate for the health, safety, and support of all. I think it is really inspiring to see what happens when we do not ignore the disparities in our community. I am delighted to share a new program, Community Connect. We release a report every Friday to highlight the needs of our immigrant neighbors and draw attention to noteworthy things we are seeing in the community. They can be found here.
Amy Shackelford