Livonia Dollars for Scholars Chapter

Dedicated community members have been talking about how to provide educational opportunities beyond the typical high school program and how to provide more opportunities for Livonia students to attend postsecondary education schooling.

From these conversations, Livonia has established a Livonia Dollars for Scholars Program. Believing that every student desiring a postsecondary education deserves the means to achieve it, dedicated community members, business owners, Board of Education members, parents and Livonia faculty and staff have formed a Dollars for Scholars chapter with the help of a $1000 start-up grant from the AXA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of AXA Financial.

The vision of the group is as follows:

We on the Livonia Dollars for Scholars aspire to be recognized by all stakeholders in our school community as a valued, professional resource for promoting all types of postsecondary education attendance at our students' school of choice and to provide opportunity for local philanthropy to benefit local student scholarships and educational opportunities beyond the typical high school program.

As part of the vision of providing educational opportunities beyond the typical high school program and under the umbrella of Dollars for Scholars, is LEEP (Livonia Exceptional Education Program). This past year, LEEP worked to arrange for an educational trip to El Yungue National Forest to study the rain forest.   In March of 2007,  the trip came to fruition when twelve students and three teachers traveled to Puerto Rico.  All expenses were paid through the generous donations made to LEEP by community members.

The second part of our vision is to provide fiscal support for postsecondary education to students of Livonia School District. In June 2007, we were able to award over $3000 in additional scholarships. One of the most exciting assets of this program is that many colleges will match Dollars for Scholars Scholarships. This means that for a student who is awarded a $500 scholarship and attends a school which matches Dollars for Scholars Scholarship, the student will essentially receive a $1000 scholarship.

As we begin to build Livonia Dollars for Scholars, we will be sharing more information through the FOCUS and this web site.