Fifteen of the 18 students who won 25 scholarships totaling over $20,000 this year at the annual Fairhaven Dollars for Scholars award ceremony on Wednesday, 5/23/17, pose for the local free sheet. Photo by Glenn C. Silva.
By Glenn C. Silva, Neighb News Corerspondent
On Wednesday, 5/24, Fairhaven held its 10th annual Dollars for Scholars awards ceremony at the Century House in Acushnet and awarded 18 students 25 scholarships totaling over $20,000.
The funds for this year’s scholarships have been raised, for the most part, by volunteers who have passion about causes, community, and making a difference in a scholar’s financial plan.
In 1958, an optometrist in Fall River, Dr. Irving Fradkin had a simple but profound idea: If everyone in his community gave just a dollar to an educational fund, it would be enough to help nearly every student in the community attend college. He called his plan “Dollars for Scholars,” and it has expanded into what today is the nation’s largest non-profit, private-sector scholarship and educational support organization, Scholarship America.
Since its founding, Scholarship America has distributed more than $3.9 billion to over 2.4 million students across the country through various programs including Dollars for Scholars, Dreamkeepers, and Scholarship Management Services.
In 2017 alone over 500 volunteer-driven programs helped award over $240 million in scholarship awards to over 125,000 students.
Benefits of Dollars for Scholars include collegiate partners, matching scholarships and renewable scholarships. Collegiate Partners are more than 390 postsecondary institutions that agree to treat scholarships awarded through Scholarship America programs fairly.
A new option for Fairhaven’s Dollars for Scholars chapter is renewable scholarships.
Renewable scholarships allow for a previous year’s recipients to be awarded scholarships for 2018. There still is an application process and criteria to be met to be awarded this scholarship.
Here is a list of the scholarships and their recipients:
• Barton B. Leach Memorial: $1200 Kaitlyn Costa
• Carl Lee Pacheco Memorial All Sports FHS: $2500 each, Mathew Mitchell, Peyton Calvao, and William Elliot
• FDS Curtis L. Lopes Memorial: $500 Camryn Kruger
• FDS Scholarship Fund in Memory of Myra A. Lopes: $500 Luke Lariviere
• FHS Class of 1950: $500 Makenna DaCosta
• Fairhaven Improvement Association: $1000 Eliana DaCunha, and $2000 Kaitlyn Costa
• FDS Fairhaven Public Safety:$500 Kayci Sniezek
• Fairhaven Road Race FHS: $500 Dominick Ibrahim, and $500 Riley Tetrault
• Fairhaven Road Race GNBVT: $1000 Steven Days
• FDS Ft. Phoenix 5K Road Race / Memory of Curtis L. Lopes, II: $500 Bailey Cormier
• FDS Ft. Phoenix Polar Plunge: $500 Steven Days-Merrill, $500 Abigail Tavares, $500 Kathryn Kenny, and $500 Riley Tetrault
• Kathleen M. Rocha Memorial:$500 William Elliott
• Leroy Wood/Victoria Pilling Aguiar Memorial: $500 Kaelyn Bourgeois, and $400 Madalena Medeiros
• Paul Powers Murphy/MOLIFE: $400 Kaelyn Bourgeois
• Rogers School Alumni: $400 Jill Douglas
• FDS Ronald J. Tavares: $500 Seanmichael Downey
• Donald Martin Memorial Athletic: $500 Mathew Mitchell
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