Mid-Fiscal Year Update: SWE D-SWE 4 Life Endowed Scholarship Program
SWE 4 Life Fiscal Year 2018 Status: $1850 out of $2500 goal
Still need: ~$14,710 to meet final program goal of $25,000 for endowed scholarship.
#SWE4Life #EndofYearGiving
Can you believe the year is almost over? We are just over halfway to our goal for this year with the support from our section’s Life Members and friends! We received over $1800 which means we are on our way to getting our 2nd endowed scholarship and receive the full match from SWE D for our efforts! In addition to our fundraising efforts, we are ambitious and started two other endowed programs thanks to Pat Hillberg, husband to Life Member Josie Rewald. A third Endowed Scholarship program, Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship, will be geared for those going into Community College first to pursue a Technical Field. It will be a first for the whole society and we have agreed to create the pilot. Finally, we are working on an endowed program to create a teacher/mentor award in honor of Josie Rewald and Lisa Perazza. We lost both of them during the Fall 2016 and both loved to mentor young women. Check out our separate blog posts on those endowed programs. After we complete these, perhaps something in honor of SWE’s 1999 Achievement Award Recipient and Detroit member whom we found out recently passed in Spring 2016, Dr. Shirley Schwartz. (If there are any volunteers out there to support, let us know.)
For those reading our blog for the first time, our SWE 4 Life Endowed Scholarship initiative targets our section’s Life Members to take the lead and build a legacy to support future female engineers through an endowed scholarship. The challenge to the Life members is to raise $2,500 each year for the next four (4) years to reach the $25,000 required for an endowed scholarship. To help encourage participation, SWE Detroit’s current officers agreed to match up to $2,500 each year to support the initiative. The endowed scholarship will provide an annual $1,000 scholarship to an aspiring and deserving women pursuing engineering. If the goal is met, the first scholarship would be awarded during the 70th Anniversary of SWE Detroit! SWE D’s Life Members would like the first scholarship to be given in honor of Josie E. Rewald.
If you know any of the SWE Detroit Life Members, please help us communicate to them. We have found that they, like many of you, are super busy and can miss the posts and emails. Some don’t even have an email. So if you see them at work or outside, please tell them what you have read on the blog.
Not a Life Member? No problem, anyone can donate to the fund (some have already). Every little bit helps, so we encourage you to donate if you can. Your donation is tax deductible.
The program will be tracked separately from the Member Solicitation Program and have its own levels:
Diamond $ 1000 +
Sapphire $ 500 to $ 999
Emerald $ 250 to $ 499
Quartz $ 50 to $ 249
Contributions will be tracked yearly and the level will be determined based on accumulated contributions received by SWE Detroit.
To donate online to any of our programs, go to www.swedetroit.org and look for the Donate Button on the site for Paypal. After you submit your information and input your donation amount, you will have the opportunity to designate your donation. Please input in the text field to allow it to be allocated appropriately: “SWE 4 Life Endowed Scholarship or Life Members Endowed Scholarship”, “Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship”, “Teacher/Mentor Award”, specify another program, or the general fund.
Big Thanks to our supporters who have donated so far to our programs (updated as of 11/18/17):
SWE 4 Life Scholarship (Goal: $25,000)
Diamond
Jessica Mattis
Laurie Ramsay
Dawn Tilbury
Sapphire Level
Brooke Voto
Ally (company match in honor of Brooke Voto)
Emerald Level
Lisa & Christopher Rewald (in honor of Josie Rewald)
Tina Poquette
Michele Marion
Susan Cischke
Kristine Lott
Lisa Henn
Quartz Level
Jessica Swan
Miriam Breslauer
Katie Amelio
Lisa Purvis
Jenny & Robert Morikawa (in honor of Josie Rewald, gifted $100 in honor of friend Cheryl Williams)
Cathi Kohn
Barabara Ferry (in honor of Josie Rewald)
Katherine Hillberg (in honor of Josie Rewald)
Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship (Goal: $25,000)
See the blog post on the Josie E. Rewald Memorial Scholarship
Teacher/Mentor Award Endowed Program (Name TBD, Goal $27,500)
If you have any questions, are interested in supporting the SWE Detroit SWE 4 Life Program, or creating your own endowed program to build a pipeline or legacy to benefit SWE Detroit Programs, please contact Lisa Purvis, Jenny Partlan, Anne Kamenju, or Jennifer Morikawa at swe_detroit@swe.org.
