Ron Brown Scholar Community Service Foundation
2011 Community Service Foundation Grants
At the heart of the Ron Brown Scholar Program lies an unshakable commitment to service. The Ron Brown Scholar Program launched its Community Service Foundation (CSF) in April of 2008 with the intent to help Ron Brown Scholars continue serving their communities through innovative service projects. Thanks to a gift from the CAP Charitable Foundation, the CSF will award small grants to Ron Brown Scholar applicants who submit proposals of service projects that demonstrate visionary solutions to problems of social importance.
2011 Recipients:
Biz Camp - Jason Young (2000) applied for funding to offer his Biz Camp opportunity to additional students in the Bay Area. He requested and was granted $1,000 to support this project.
Reads at Peace Community Library - Damilola Oladeru came back to the CSF for additional funding to support placing computers in the library she helped to build with her initial grant. She received $1,465 for her project and reached over 2500 people in Erin-Ijasa, Nigeria.
Jefferson Area Food Bank - The Ron Brown Scholar CSF reached out to the local area food bank in Charlottesville, VA on the first ever Ron Brown Scholar Alumni Day of Service. We donated $500 worth of food items and participated in volunteer work in June 2011.
Haiti Scholarships - Charly Jeune and Geraldine Pierre teamed up once again to work with disadvantaged children in Port Salut, Haiti. Based on their work with a local non-profit organization and their prior project, they discovered that the best way to assist these youth is to offer them full scholarships to school. The CSF granted this project $5,000 and helped 200 children, who would not have been able to, attend school.
Access Solar - Robert Kabera (2007) is in the process of starting a non-profit to distribute solar cookers and other such pollution solutions to small villages in Africa. He and his partners are currently working in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, and South Africa to pilot their project and gather information to fine tune their approach and their equipment. His project was awarded $1,500 to assist with the logistics of this initial action. Robert hopes to reach at least 75 villagers on this first trip.
Total: $9,220.45