The Child Scholarship Program was founded in 2016, the same year that The Innovation Trust was established. This program is designed to aid New Zealand families with alleviating the financial stresses associated with back to school cost. The recipients are children from families that are facing financial hardship. To date, we have awarded 30 kiwi kids with our Child Scholarships.
Our Scholarships are are valued at $150 per child per year and is paid directly to the child’s school. The scholarship is then available to be used for school uniforms, stationary cost, paper levy's, sports fees, camp fees and any other school related costs.
In 2019 we set out to measure the effectiveness of our Child Scholarship program. We created a survey to be filled out by our 2018 scholarship recipients and were able to get some valuable data and feedback.
The 2018 recipients had this to say about our program:
. “The Child Scholarship really helped us as a family unit with the back to school costs. Thank you”
· “Thank you to the Innovation Trust for awarding our daughter this Scholarship. This really
helped our family more than words can express our gratitude”
· “Thank you so much with this financial assistance and support”
· “If it wasn’t for the scholarship [my child] would not experience School Summer Camp the Kiwi way and in a Christian atmosphere. She learnt a lot of new skills and enlarged her circle of friends! So thank you very much Innovation Charity Trust.”
· “It’s great, with being with the funding, or else, [my child] would not have gained all the
experience she enjoyed.”
· “It was a great blessing to have it [the Child Scholarship].”
We also found that 100% of our recipients where present in class for 100%-90% of the year. See the Diagram below from our survey.
We also asked our recipients what the scholarship was used on specifically. As represented in the graph below
At the end of the year we will be asking our 2019 recipients to also complete our survey.
In 2019 we partnered with a Primary School in Tokoroa and provided the School with 3 scholarships, to be award to students that fit the criteria. It is our wish to roll out our program nationwide across New Zealand.
It is also our hope that these scholarships will ease the financial stress on families. This, in turn, will afford students extra-curricular access that will foster personal growth and future opportunity which would otherwise be denied on simply a fiscal basis.
Thereby obtaining more positive and better outcomes for students to succeed and pave the way to a brighter future.
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