For nearly two years Community Foundation Grey Bruce's Smart & Caring Education Initiative team has been developing a new website, www.payforschoolgreybruce.com, which aims to identify sources of locally-developed funding for Grey-Bruce area students seeking financial support for post-secondary education and training. This website will include award information to support university, college, apprenticeship and workplace training programs. The mobile-friendly website will allow students the flexibility to search for student awards through highly intuitive filters, with searches by post-secondary pathway, areas of interest, local boards and schools, ethnicity, special interest ties and more.
Community Foundation Grey Bruce now asks for the community's help. The website team has included details of as many application-based student awards as it was able to obtain during research for the site, and welcomes any information that educators, students, or the general public can add to make this locally-focused application-based student awards listing as complete as possible. Please email studentawardscfgb@bmts.com with any student award information as soon as possible to ensure the timely inauguration of the new site.
The Foundation's Smart & Caring Education Initiative has been the driver behind the creation of the website. The need was identified by local parents and students who expressed frustration in finding a comprehensive source of information on financial aid for local students. The Smart & Caring Education Initiative also responds to another local wish: it aims to add one million dollars to the Foundation's education endowment fund to provide a massive, much-needed increase in available funding for local students. The website was funded through a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The development team includes a number of local educators, Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program coordinator Dave Barrett and Foundation staff.
"We're very excited to launch this long-awaited site in approximately 8 weeks. We hope the community will see the value in the project as it addresses very real regional problems. We also hope that people will contact our office to ensure we have included every available source of funding for local students in our database. If the award is locally-developed, or intended for students from Grey Bruce, we need to know about it. The awards on the site will be application based only, excluding strictly internal school awards. The public is also invited to work with us to create new sources of funding for local students through tax-deductible donations in the creation of new endowed education funds" said Kimberley West, Chair of Community Foundation Grey Bruce.
