Tri-County Offerings to Inner-City Students

Aware that an education is much more than sitting in class, Tri-County Scholarship Fund has been moving aggressively in the past year to increase the number of and range of “outside the classroom” learning opportunities it offers to its scholarship recipients.

In October of ’07, one TCSF trustee opened up his beautiful farm in Tewksbury, NJ to three hundred TCSF grade school students. There, the children were treated to an entire day of pony rides, pumpkin-picking, clowns, inflatable rides, face-painting and, of course, lots of food!

October also saw the TCSF high school students sharing the annual awards dinner with Tyco CEO Ed Breen, the trustees, their guests and corporate donors. Virtually all the tables in the room were populated by Tri-County high school award recipients, enjoying the evening and sharing their dreams and plans with fellow attendees. Needless to say, we received more comments about the students than about any other part of the evening!

In December, several TCSF trustees joined students and teachers at Paterson Catholic to serve a holiday dinner to almost 500 senior citizens from Paterson, Clifton and Passaic. It is one of the school’s finest and most honored traditions, replete with the award-winning football team serving as the wheelchair brigade!

March of ’08 saw thirty juniors and seniors at the Bank of America headquarters in Cranford for a day on networking, writing resumes, interview skills, time management, dressing for success, business etiquette, teamwork and banking career paths.

Later in March the graduating TCSF seniors joined the trustees at a dinner celebrating the anticipated conclusion of their high school careers. It was an opportunity for the students and trustees to talk together about the future, college plans, vocational choices and also to pause and experience the satisfaction of a job well done.

April will see almost 2,000 students at the Community Theatre of New Jersey for Productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (high school) and Beethoven’s Wig (grade school), a highly entertaining interactive introduction to world of classical music.

Plans are also underway for the TCSF high school girls to be guests of the female partners of the J.H. Cohn accounting firm for a day on “Women Mentoring Women” which will introduce them to female executives and the world of accounting. In addition, the President of Wells Fargo Bank (North East Region) and her team are putting together a presentation on The World of Money for Fall of 2008 .

In these and many other events on the horizon, Tri-County’s goal is to enable both grade school and high school students to experience the wide world of possibilities that an education opens up to them.