Year in Review 2019: Point Roberts Dollars for Scholars

By Fern Pelletier

As part of Scholarship America’s national network of locally based, volunteer-driven Dollars for Scholars chapters, our mission has been to mobilize our community on behalf of post-secondary education success for our students.

Dollars for Scholars chapters like ours help hometown students achieve their educational goals by raising scholarship funds, establishing endowments, providing assistance with college readiness and the financial aid process, and distributing scholarships each year.

With a year-round population of approximately 1,200 residents including both grade school and college students, and limited businesses, Point Roberts is proud of the support provided by the Point Roberts Dollars for Scholars chapter.

One of the biggest challenges for our local students is our remote location. The closest U.S. college over 55 miles away with no public transportation available. For this reason, local students are typically unable to live at home while attending post-secondary education.

There are also limited options for students to find work locally in order to earn funds for their education. These are two of the key reasons why our organization is important to our community: our students rely on the scholarships and support we provide to be able to achieve their post-secondary goals.

This has been a successful year with our financial partners donating over $18,000 to support the students of Point Roberts. The donations have allowed the scholarships to go from $500 to $1,200 per student.

We would like to acknowledge our financial partners of $1,000 and more during the 2019 fundraising campaign: Cando Recyling ($1,000), CanAm ($1,000), J. Ross ($1,000), Whidbey Telecom ($1,000), L. Loutens of Gradeworks ($4,000), The Helen & Jose Colton Foundation ($5,000).

Thank you for your continued support. For more information, check out pointroberts.dollarsforscholars.org.

(Ed. Note: Neither Dollars for Scholars or PRIBC received emails or invitations in sufficient time to be able to appear in our January issue published last month.)