Kerr Foundation awards NHI $65k in support of Lake County students

The Roy G. Kerr Foundation, continuing its history of generous grants to the National Hispanic Institute, has awarded the organization $65,000 in support of Lake County students who will participate in NHI’s 2017 summer programs.

The foundation was launched in 1994 with the purpose of supporting the Latino community in Lake County over a 25-year period, and has been supporting NHI students since 2005.

“We’re honored to be receiving this award from the Kerr Foundation,” said Nicole Sada, executive vice president of policy and advancement at NHI. “For more than a decade, they have supported promising young Latino students through their generous grant awards to offset tuition costs to attend NHI’s leadership initiatives. We’re hopeful that the work the Kerr Foundation has done will inspire others in the greater Chicago area to pick up the mantle and carry on their legacy of support.”

This past summer, nearly 100 students from across the county who received Kerr Foundation-funded scholarships participated in NHI programs, including the Midwest Great Debate at Augustana College and the National LDZ at Elmhurst College.

“We’ve supported NHI throughout the years, and it’s clearly a program that’s meaningfully impacted the lives of a number of Lake County kids,” said Holly Kerr, who manages the foundation’s operations. “It’s been amazing to see the changes that NHI has made in their lives.”

“We’ve been communicating for a while that this was created as a 25-year program that ends in 2019,” she noted. “We’ve made the $65,000 donation to NHI this year because we’ve seen it work to change lives, but we also know there are organizations we haven’t yet supported, advancing the lives of Latinos, that we’re also looking to support in our last two and a half years as a foundation.”