SPONSORS
Being a Sponsor
Sponsors make our program possible. Each Star Kid is matched with an individual sponsor or a group willing to contribute toward the student’s education. Sponsorships allow our Star Kids to attend “effective” schools – small, mission-based, autonomous, culturally appropriate non-public neighborhood schools. Sponsors are able to see the direct impact they are having on a Star Kid’s life when they receive the child’s report card, school photo, letter from the Executive Director and a thank you note from the student. Sponsors may meet their student, or choose to remain anonymous. The sponsor may also choose to become the Student’s Mentor. Statistics show that a child is more likely to succeed if they know that someone is interested in their success.
Who Can Be a Sponsor?
There are many unique ways to sponsor a Star Kid.
Examples include:
- Individual
- Group of Friends
- Family
- Company or Employee (matching funds)
- Private Fundraising Events (e.g., cocktail party, croquet tournament, marathon running)
What are the Sponsorship Levels?
- Full Scholarship Sponsors: $4,000 (grades K-8); $4,500 (grades 9-12) annually.
- Partial Scholarships Sponsors: $2,000 or more annually.
- Scholarship Fund Donors: any amount in support of tuition, after-school programs, summer camps, tutoring, and uniforms.
How Do I find out more about the program?
To learn more about becoming a sponsor in Newport County, RI or Fall River, MA, please contact Karen Flanagan, Executive Director, at kflanagan@starkidsprogram.org or call (401) 848-4187. The Executive Director and members of our Board are happy to meet with you.
INDIVIDUAL SPONSOR
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Individual Sponsors – Ken Moldow & Roe O'Brien
“I think about the Star Kids Scholarship Program with my heart and my head. Opening the doors to schools that offer academic, spiritual and personalized instruction is an act that speaks to my heart. Investing in the success of a child through education, often avoids the horrendous costs associated with incarceration and substance abuse, and that speaks directly to my mind.” Ken Moldow, Sponsor/Board President
A sponsor’s view: Pretty cool!
To coin a cliché, what a difference a year makes. One short year ago, I was made aware of a young woman struggling to make it through the Seventh Grade in a Public Middle School. This is not a condemnation of Public Schools. It is a tale of matching the “right” school, with the needs of a particular student. It goes to the heart of what Star Kids does well—placing kids in schools that help maximize the academic, social and spiritual life of that unique child.
All Star Kids face some formidable challenges—Parents struggling with substance abuse, incarceration, often both and the vagaries of those parents flowing in and out of a child’s life.
My Star Kid faced a series of obstacles that can crush a child and put them on a path of pretty destructive behavior. My Star Kid faced the reality of both parents being incarcerated. She was doing relatively well living with her Grandparents in the South—until they became too old to cope with the responsibilities of raising a young girl, especially one just entering her teenage years.
She was sent “up north” to start Middle School and live with her stepmother who assumed legal custody of a pretty emotionally beat up young person. The real day to day nightmare started when she began attending a Public Middle School. How would you feel, coming home every single day, crying because of bullying, pressure to fit into a very different culture and having the Administrators at her Middle School, respond to the child’s cry for help, the step mother’s cry for help met with the words: you’ve got to figure it out yourself, we’ve got kids with bigger problems?
Here’s a child who had artistic abilities, was a good student, played the violin, sang in her church choir…those activities were suspended because of the peer pressures at school.
Stepmom and Aunt had their sights on the right prize—they knew the school environment was not meeting this deserving child’s needs. They contacted a local “mission based” Private school and, in turn, the school reached out to Star Kids. Can you help? Can you take a careful look at this student? What they were really asking was; can you throw this child a lifeline?
It’s one year later and our Star Kid has blossomed! Excellent grades, healthy peer relationships, exploring her artistic interests—most importantly—a happy child. Not all our kids have such dramatic turnarounds…it doesn’t always go in a straight line—but we keep trying.
It comes down to this Star Kid’s words: I’m somebody at school and they really love me. Pretty cool!