YSU Honors College Receives Grant to Help Homeless
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A $2,661 grant will support efforts by students in Youngstown State University’s Honors College to expand educational and service efforts to the homeless and hungry of the Youngstown area, including a student service retreat over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend in January.
YSU received the Iowa Campus Compact grant as part of the MLK Day of Service Community Partnership Project. It is among 40 colleges and universities across the country to be awarded one of the grants. The Honors College applied for the grant, which provides funding for MLK Day service projects geared toward alleviating hunger and supporting veterans.
“Our students will be making scarves and blankets for the homeless, organizing a canned food drive, working directly with local agencies and learning from guest speakers and educational activities at the retreat,” said Amy Cossentino, director of the Honors College. “Hunger and homelessness awareness is a societal concern that our students have been passionate about for almost two decades, and this grant helps us take our service efforts to a new level.”
The Honors College launched a campus-wide campaign in November with National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week to collect canned goods to be donated to the YSU Student Food Pantry on campus and the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley as one component to the MLK Day of Service project.
Student organizations can collect and donate cans at Fok Hall on the YSU campus through Dec. 9 for a chance to win money toward their organization. The groups that donate the most cans will win $150, $75 or $50 prizes. Faculty and staff on campus are also encouraged to donate canned goods at Fok Hall through Jan. 13.
Pictured: Honors College students Caroline Smith, sophomore, left, and Megan Evans, senior, student coordinator on the grant.
Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
