The last time our Foundation was together, we hosted a Celebrity Painting event on March 5, 2020. We gathered with local leaders and the Westerville Student Education Foundation to paint butterflies for a fundraiser. It was a fun night, full of laughter among friends.

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In just ten days, everything changed.

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When our schools closed on March 16, we at the Westerville Education Foundation knew we needed to evolve our organization to meet new challenges for students in our community.   

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In the months since March, we’ve made big changes. We:

• learned to conduct our business remotely

• created The Big Lift to support WARM & Neighborhood Bridges during the pandemic

• canceled our annual fundraiser and are working with students on a redesign

• found a new way to celebrate teachers of the month via surprise Zoom meetings

• created the StoryBox program to send books to kids at home over the summer.

 

We are spending more of our time creating and collaborating than ever before.

 

And we aren’t done changing. We are meeting the call to action to be a local partner in our commitment to diversity and inclusion and to moving our community forward into action and change in battling racism locally and in our schools.

 

The hard work we do to change is making us stronger, more creative, and more capable of executing our mission, which is to enrich the learning experience and broaden the minds of our students through the funding and support of innovative educational programs. We are proud of our tradition of providing grants, celebrating excellence, and of supporting innovating programs. But we can do more.

 

By embracing that transformation, we emerge even more dedicated to supporting education, innovation and inspiration in our schools.

 

None of us will be the same after 2020. But we are excited about what we can accomplish together for Westerville schools in these challenging times and far into the future we are all building together.

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