Sutton Scholars is awarded the Unified Gift Grant
The National Board met with James Woody from Sutton Scholars to present the organization with the Unified Gift Grant
Sutton Scholars is a high school enrichment program for young people from a number of high schools in the city of Baltimore. All of their students live within the city. They describe their participants in the program as young people who are sort of in the middle of the road. A lot of programs work with the most at-risk young people, or those that have high academic potential. But they have found that there’s a group of young people who fall into neither one of those categories. They tend to be overlooked, because they’re not the squeaky wheel.
Most of their young people come from homes that are socioeconomically considered low income. That’s not a predictor necessarily of life success. They try to attach the Sutton Scholar program to these young people. They run a six-week summer program every year. Five of those weeks are built around a curriculum that focuses on five components:
Tools for Success – Tools for success could mean anything from conflict resolution to how to navigate high school and then life beyond high school.
Financial Literacy – Financial Literacy is important for modern life. Students master the budgeting/financial planning skills necessary for successful living, including banking basics, savings plans, understanding credit scores, the ins/outs of installment purchases such as auto loans and mortgages, and recognizing credit traps, debt cycles, and compound interest.
Building a Better Baltimore – A focus is placed on trying to help young people identify challenging situations in their city, in this case, Baltimore, but more importantly than identifying the challenges, they want to work with them to try and come up with solutions to those problems.
Communications – This instruction teaches the students to apply all the skills they learn in ways that they consider to be important and meaningful.
Leadership – Understanding the qualities of leadership and how to recognize and potentially utilize these skills is woven into the final year of the program.
Mail-in Donation Form
Every Triennial the ECW encourages the dioceses and local groups to help sponsor with a cash donation to help bolster the Community Grant amount. As with past triennials the NECW board will add funds to assist with the donations by the diocese, local groups, or individual members.
For mailed donations please use the downloadable pdf. When completing the mail-in form notate your donation amount next to “Unified Triennial Gift” section of the printable form and mail the completed form to the address on the form.