Earlier this fall, the Marilyn and William Young Charitable Foundation announced its plan to become more well-known in the community. The board wanted to celebrate its 20th year and bring recognition to its impact on the community, said board chair Joe Overby.
“We haven’t ever done anything community-wide,” Overby said.
With that in mind, the Marilyn and William Young Charitable Foundation launched a new initiative designed to engage the foundation with young leaders within the community and “create a thriving, progressive community.”
Through the initiative, Student Leadership Grants, the foundation board has involved students and their teachers or project leaders from the three local school districts. Overby said that prior to announcing the grant, the board met with the superintendents from the three districts to get input from each district.
“We wanted to offer it to everybody,” Overby said.
All local schools were invited to develop a service project addressing a community or school need that can be resolved. In September, the Young Foundation’s board and staff held brainstorming and feedback sessions for each school system where the ideas grew.
“The plans are so heartwarming,” he said.
Each of the 22 participating schools has received a $1,000 grant to support their project and implementation of each project will begin in the next few months.
“Through this partnership, we hope to encourage and highlight the leadership and problem-solving potential of students across our area,” said Sara Hemingway, executive director of the Marilyn and William Young Charitable Foundation. “We believe that creative solutions will be cultivated to shape a more inclusive, impassioned Owensboro.”
Overby said the primary purpose is to get kids involved in identifying a problem and getting them to solve it — or attempt to solve it since some are more involved.
One of the service projects is being developed by students from Foust Elementary. They are working on a non-violence campaign that will promote peace in the community.
Foust teacher Ashlie Hurley said that students in the third, fourth and fifth grades completed a writing assignment on what each saw as a community need. Teachers selected several from the writings and shared them with the students who then voted on the one they wanted to implement.
“There were actually several students that came up with some common ideas about feeling safe in their community and what we could do about it,” Hurley said. “I believe that violence is making an impact on students’ lives because they are seeing it firsthand with family members and neighbors and friends.”
Hurley said the students want to create signs to remind the adults to remember that kids live there and to stop the violence.
Owensboro Catholic’s 4-6 campus students requested funding to aid in providing Christmas and spring care packages to send to the 206th Engineer Battalion of the Kentucky National Guard from Owensboro. There are 159 men and women stationed overseas from this Battalion. Students plan to involve the entire school and each homeroom will adopt a soldier and will make handmade crafts and pictures to send to the troops.
Students in Future Problem Solving at Apollo High School want to increase support, awareness and growth of the teaching staff who have made impacts on students and provide mentorship to students in the middle and elementary feeder schools for academic and social needs. They will identify and evaluate the greatest needs, including after school homework mentoring, social mentoring and media awareness and create an action plan.
Overby said the board hopes that students who participate see that they can solve a problem or bring awareness to it and telling others could start a fire within the community, including adults.
The schools involved will showcase and present their projects in early 2020 at the Young Foundation’s 20th-anniversary celebration to be held at the RiverPark Center.
