Greetings from St. Thomas!

Founder and Director Nick Ascienzo shares this note from St. Thomas!

Hello, friends and followers of Ascienzo Family Foundation, from St. Thomas, USVI! No, I’m not vacationing, but rather going into my fourth week of volunteering with a non-profit group called All Hands and All Hearts. They have been assisting in the recovery of the island after Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated the Island in the fall of 2017. Since then, some 3.3 million dollars and 1200 volunteers have brought relief to individual homeowners and communities throughout the area. The project is ending by April 29th, and I’m humbled to have been part of such a massive operation. Our last site rebuild is a community park, started in December of 2018, and scheduled for completion today, April 25th, at which time a celebration of renewal will take place - an appropriate last big event for staffers, volunteers, and local families!

Although our missions serve different needs, the AFF and All Hands and All Hearts have a commonality that has become increasingly apparent with each passing day. We both strive to build communities - the AFF through local outreach programs and ambassador networks, and All Hands and All Hearts through their home rebuild assistance which allows individuals to be dynamic members in the rebuilding of their own previously disrupted neighborhood. We share a spirit of compassion for those who are underserved and a mission of partnering with those that can effect positive change. My vantage point today as a foot soldier for All Hands and All Hearts in the renewal of St. Thomas is not altogether that different from my view as a director for the AFF - from both positions I see connectivity as the key to accomplishing great things and in addressing the needs of others!

As my time here winds down, my focus returns to the AFF. It has been wonderful to hear reports from our local Red Hook ambassadors Tess Rothwell, Emma Donahue, and Brenna Dolen, and chef Tony Fraenkel, on their planning leading up to the Senior Expo this Saturday from 10 am to 2 pm at the Red Hook Community Center. Kudos to them! I’m excited to get home to participate in the event.

Local Grant: Senior Programming at the Red Hook Public Library

In 2017, the AFF approved a grant to the Red Hook Public Library for senior programming. We were excited by all the Library had been doing for seniors in the community, as well as the variety of programming they were hoping to offer moving forward. In the grant application, Director Dawn Jardine noted that at the start of a recent program, “a patron stood up. . . to express his gratitude to library staff. He said, ‘Thank you for noticing we’re alive.’ He appreciated not only the content of our program, but even more the fact that we reached out to them at all.”

In the past, the Library has held events for seniors like concerts by area singer-songwriters, movie nights, and arts & crafts nights. Noting the food insecurity of some local seniors, the Library always offers healthy, interesting food at every program. The AFF’s 2017 grant provided close to $2,000 in funds for off-site movie screenings, performer and guest speaker fees, and refreshments for eight events.

All were enthralled by the local history presentation!

The picture featured here is from the last event for seniors funded by the 2017 grant. The event was a local history lunch with Claudine and Chris Klose, and it was packed! Seniors from all over the area, including from the Commons, made the trip over to learn more about their town.

The Foundation was excited to be able to fund this sort of programming- our mission goals are threefold (alleviating poverty, promoting education, and aiding the elderly), but we find that a majority of our grants support the first two. We are always looking for grants that will support programming for seniors, so if you’re working with such groups locally (or as an ambassador elsewhere), we’d love to be in touch!

Betsy Kirtland: Securing Over $15,000 in Grants as AFF Ambassador

Betsy Kirtland (RHHS ‘12)

Introducing one of our inaugural ambassadors, Betsy Kirtland (RHHS ‘12)! Betsy has advocated for two organizations during her tenure with the Foundation. For her first year of advocacy, Betsy applied for a grant on behalf of the Mystic Learning Center (MLC) in Boston, MA, and for the last three years she has applied for grants on behalf of Circle Camp at Fleur de Lis in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. According to Betsy, “both of these organizations are funded primarily from small-scale grant organizations like the Ascienzo Family Foundation. With assistance from the AFF, they have been able to support more children and provide more and better resources for them.”

Betsy’s advocacy started while a student at Tufts University, when she was volunteering for an after school program that paired Tufts students with kids at the MLC. The MLC aims to enhance the educational, emotional, and social development of kids who live in the Mystic Public Housing Development and surrounding neighborhoods in East Somerville. The Foundation’s first grant provided funds for field-trips and club activity supplies. It also helped fund the stipends for Junior Staff members, who themselves had benefited from the MLC’s programs and were now in leadership roles. Thanks to Betsy’s great advocacy during the first year, our partnership continued with the MLC over the next year as well. Directors Nick and Sophie, along with Betsy, got to meet with the MLC Director, Florence Bergman, back in the spring of 2017 to hear more about the organization and how our grant was helping out.

For the past three years, Betsy has worked on grants for Circle Camp, a week-long tuition-free summer camp for young girls who have lost a parent. Circle provides a space where these campers can be themselves and grieve, but also just the chance to be kids and have fun. Betsy is passionate about working with kids and “helping create environments where they feel safe, understood, and relaxed.” Betsy herself has volunteered as a counselor at Circle for three years. She has shared more about her experience previously on our blog- head on over to read more!

Betsy is currently a bridge engineer in Boston, and will be returning to Circle Camp this summer as a counselor.

Introducing the Ascienzo Family Foundation Scholarship

We’re excited to announce the first Ascienzo Family Foundation Scholarship! This opportunity has been something that our Board has been discussing a lot over the past year, and we are so proud to be able to provide it to Red Hook High School (RHHS) seniors this year.

As the Foundation has grown over the years we’ve gotten the opportunity to work with amazing RHHS alum- many of whom have moved across the country, whether for college or for their careers, and become engaged in their new communities. Through this network we’ve provided grants to many different organizations in places like San Bernardino County, CA, Tuscon, AZ, Boston, MA, and Chicago, IL (and many more!). But one of the most rewarding parts of the most recent years’ work has also been digging into our own community more and providing opportunities for local grants, as well as partnering with programs like Bard CCE and the Community Center. We hope that through this scholarship we can continue that growth. The scholarship will provide $1,500 to a student who plans to stay in the area after graduation and is excited about local civic engagement. This engagement could mean volunteering at a non-profit, helping the AFF with some of our reoccurring programs like the Farm Market and Food Drive, or coming up with new initiatives that promote our three mission areas.

If you know someone who may be interested, please send the application along! We can’t wait to get to know some of the RHHS graduating seniors.

Sara K Thompson: Advocating for her Students

Sara K Thompson (RHHS ‘96)

Please meet another one of our inaugural ambassadors, Sara K Thompson (RHHS ‘96)! During the 2015 grant cycle, Sara advocated for an organization called Youth On Their Own (YOTO), and the Foundation provided close to $5,000 in program support to the non-profit. YOTO is a drop-out prevention program that seeks to help homeless youth stay graduate high school.

Learn more at yoto.org

Sara got involved in the organization when she was teaching high school math and drama and discovered that some of her students were homeless and received help from YOTO. Sara started to learn more about the organization, which provides “supplementary assistance for homeless teens in school through a mini mall where they can get food and other items such as paper or hygiene products. They also provide grade-based stipends to reward academic achievement and provide bus passes to assist students who do not have a car.” At the time this grant was provided, an average of $1,260 was provided per student through the monthly stipend program. Additionally, YOTO provides access to special needs and emergency services, including additional financial assistance and free medical care. Sara said that “homelessness is a larger issue in Tucson than I realized,” and that YOTO does “amazing work to reach out and support teens that are in danger of leaving school because of having nowhere to live. Being a teenager is hard enough without having to worry about where to sleep, how to shower, or how to get to and from school.”

Sara graduated from Frostburg State University in with a degree in Theater Arts. She currently works as a Program Facilitator at Kitt Peak National Observatory Visitor Center, in Tucson, AZ.