Latino Scholarship Program Gets Boost

After watching her Honduras-born parents struggle through life in low-paying jobs because they dropped out of school after eighth grade, Karla Solis pledged to earn a college degree.

But just getting to college was a challenge.

Having worked long hours after school to help her parents make ends meet, the San Francisco 18-year-old knew she could not ask them to pitch in for tuition.

Now, with help from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, she will start at UC Santa Cruz this fall, becoming one of the few Latinas from her high school and the first in her family to attend a four-year university.

Money “is one less thing that I have to worry about,” Solis said. “A lot of people don’t get that extra money to give them the boost to go to school.”

Thousands more students will soon get a helping hand from the San Francisco-based Hispanic Scholarship Fund, which this month received the single largest grant ever given to promote education for the nation’s fastest-growing minority.

The $50-million grant from the Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment means that for the first time since its inception in 1975 the fund is not starting the year with its ledger at zero and scraping together small donations for scholarships.

“You brace yourself for it, but actually hearing somebody say, ‘We believe in your kids and we believe in what you are doing’ is overwhelming,” said Sara Martinez Tucker, president and CEO of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. “We are going to be able to quadruple our support in one year.”

Last year, the fund awarded $3.52 million to 2,600 students across the country based on financial need and academic achievement. This year it will be able to give $12 million to 6,000 students, with the remainder of the $50-million grant spread out over the next four years.

The fund is receiving in one grant more than it has awarded since its inception a quarter-century ago. Since 1975, the fund has helped about 36,000 Latino students across the country with awards totaling more than $38 million.

Martinez Tucker said the grant was desperately needed to catch up with the dramatic growth in the country’s Latino population--which has risen from 22.35 million in 1990 to 30 million today.

The Lilly Endowment, one of the largest philanthropic foundations in the country, has long given money to black colleges and the United Negro College Fund. Now the growing need in the Latino community has caught its eye.

“We have become aware of this large, young Hispanic population in this country. You look at the figures and they really are compelling,” said Gretchen Wolfram, spokeswoman for the Lilly Endowment. “They present a very demonstrable need for scholarship aid since finances seem to be the major barrier for Hispanics both to go to college and stay in college.”

The Lilly Endowment, created in 1937 by heirs of the Eli Lilly and Co. pharmaceutical fortune, traditionally has supported religion, education and community development--mostly in Indiana.

The donation to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund marks the single largest gift given to a non-Indiana entity in the history of the Lilly Endowment. And it is only the second time it has given as much as $50 million to a single entity--matching the $50 million given last year to the United Way of Central Indiana.

The Hispanic Scholarship Fund will get $45 million from the grant now and has two years to raise $5 million to get the remaining $5 million in matching funds.