Archive: Around Town

Wednesday was a day of celebration at the downtown United Way building, as 16 area high school students awarded grants to local not-for-profit organizations.  Youth And Philanthropy program leader LeNorman Strong was the master of ceremonies for what was as much a celebration of the student leaders as of the grants they handed out.  "This group thought it was particularly important to fund a complete project if they could," Strong said.  "They wanted to look for projects for which this would be a stand-alone investment in the community that would be a gift that would keep on giving."

The Youth And Philanthropy program gives students a real world experience of awarding grants to needy organizations.  17 applications were received, but with limited funds, only 12 actually got grants.  Students had to decide which were most deserving, and what practical good they could do with the $25,000 donated by the Park foundation for this purpose.  Paring down $89,332 in requests, they fully funded nine of them, and gave partial funding to an additional three.  "That's a record for this program," Strong said.  "Typically the council has to do a lot more piecing to meet all of the community needs they think are important."


Ithaca High School's Morgan Howell received a special leadership certificate for his contributions to the program.  "It was a very hard decision making process," Howell said.  "I learned how hard it is to get a group of people to agree on something.  It makes your heart cry out.  You want to help them, but everything comes down to resources and you're only able to do so much.  It's a very emotional process to narrow it down to decide who gets what."

All the students were recognized before their parents, teachers, and mentors, after which the students handed representatives of each receiving organization a giant check (and a real one).  This year's participants were Zack Adams (Trumansburg), Bridgette Bangs (Ithaca), Matthew Chun (Ithaca), Ellen Cole Ithaca), Daniel Cooper (Dryden), Sharon Gami (Ithaca), Ilana Gilovich (Ithaca), Eryn Halladay (home schooled), Morgan Howell (Ithaca), Christine Kirkpatrick (Dryden), Juliet Kiyai (Ithaca), Ashlee Martinez (Lehman Alternative), Kaiya Namaste-Bercow (Ithaca), Geoffret Peterson (Trumansburg), Amy Strom (Dryden), and Kaylee Ungliech (Trumansburg).

It the eight years the program has been offered in Tompkins County $175,000 has been granted to local health and human services agencies by more than 400 students from every school district in the county.  The students have received $694,963.64 in requests over that period.

This year grants were received by the Amreican Red Cross, Brooktondale Community Center, Catholic Charities of Tompkins County, Challenge Industries, CRESP/Vitamin L, Family & Children's Services of Ithaca, Finger Lakes Independence Center, Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County, Inc., Human Services Coalition/2-1-1- Information and Referral, Ithaca Youth Bureau, The Learning Web, and the Women's Opportunity Center.

"To me one of the most surprising things was realizing the amount of need in Tompkins County alone," Howell said.  "In a fairly well off county such as Tompkins County people tend to think everything's OK.  I'm sure there are 100 more organizations out there who are trying to help people."

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