Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me… 25 years ago today Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president, the Iran hostages were released, and I was born. A very auspicious day for a history major to be born on, I must say.

Now some of you might e-mail me to say happy birthday, and others might post comments on this blog about it. I say, do neither. There’s a better way that you can wish me a happy birthday—make a contribution to the NNPCW Scholarship Fund for me, one dollar for every year of my life (I almost said day, and at a dollar for every day of my life you’d be donating $9125. A welcome contribution, but perhaps not realistic).

What is the NNPCW Scholarship Fund, you ask? Well, we’ll start almost a year ago, when I was roaming the plains of Texas on the World Tour. In one better example of my versatility as a speaker, I was giving a presentation to high school students on how to get college financial aid (a topic on which I have no formal training, but believe me—after four years of funding Whitworth, I’ve done a lot of research). After the presentation, two young women from Brazil approached. Their father was a Presbyterian pastor of a church in the Dallas area, and they wanted to finish their educations in the States. They asked if the PC(USA) offered financial aid for them.

After checking with our Office of Financial Aid for Studies, I discovered that all PC(USA) scholarships require that you be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States to receive funds. The Brazilian women were actually here on a religious visa, so they didn’t qualify.

I ran into the problem again when I visited a Kenyan new immigrant fellowship of the Presbyterian Church that April. The young women I met there had not yet achieved permanent residency status, and thus had no access to PC(USA) funding. What struck me about it, though, was that many new immigrants and refugees are the ones with the least access to traditional sources of financial aid. Many have great need, but their residency status may prevent them from receiving any funding.

There are many other members of NNPCW, too, who are struggling to make it through school as they juggle academics, jobs, and campus ministry or church activities. These are the women, newcomers to this country and women involved with NNPCW, who inspired this project. NNPCW will offer two $1000 scholarships for the 2006-2007 academic year to fund educational studies here in the United States. One scholarship will be for young women who care about NNPCW’s commitments to faith and women, and the other for new immigrant women to the United States (including those who have not yet achieved permanent residency status). And while the new immigrant scholarship is on a limited trial run this year, we are hoping that the other scholarship application will be available online February 1.

You know what I particularly like about these two scholarships? The people who are setting up the criteria, designing the applications, and selecting applicants aren’t older folks in charge of a trust fund somewhere. Like everything else in NNPCW, young women are doing it. I’ve been working with members of the Scholarship Committee all month—two members of CoCo and an alumna of the Network—to create the application that will appear in February. The same three women will review your applications and select scholarship recipients. And as women who know well the challenges of funding a college education, they’re trying to make this as painless as possible for you, the applicant.

This particular outreach is consistent with the leadership development goals that NNPCW has promoted all along. You have young women designing the scholarship with the needs of their peers in mind. Those young women are giving scholarships to other young women to help them make better lives for themselves and their communities. And we hope that the scholarships will be funded by the faithful giving of other young (and older) women (and men, too).

That’s where you come in. We hope to raise $20,000 for this scholarship ministry, funding that would ensure the survival of these two scholarships for the next ten years. And we’re looking to the women who have been most impacted by NNPCW’s ministry to come through on this one—current college students and alumnae of the Network.

Now, I really have no clue how many people actually read this blog. Generally I can count on my mom, David, David’s parents, a couple of NNPCW alumnae, a few devoted CoCo members, and Viola. But for all I know, there are a hundred of you who are reading this post. If each one of you gave $25 today online for my birthday, and there were a hundred of you, together you could fund two and a half scholarships for young women! Believe me when I say that this would be a far better birthday present than any Blue Mountain greeting card.

I’ll make it easy for you—click here to be taken to our ECO account where you can donate. Or send a donation for E049991 at:

NNPCW Scholarship Fund
100 Witherspoon St
Louisville, KY 40202-1396

Checks made out to the Presbyterian Church (USA), E049991.

Thank you for your help as NNPCW continues to reach out to young women in the church. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” --Matthew 25:40

Kelsey

Happy birthday!!

-Maisha