Norwalk Community College Foundation Receives $100,000 Grant

Recognizing the need to help students cope with the continuing challenges and emergencies brought on by the worsening COVID-19 pandemic, a local philanthropic foundation has awarded a special $100,000 grant to support Norwalk Community College Foundation’s student emergency fund. Since March, the NCC Foundation has used emergency funds to provide rapid assistance for students coping with the ongoing effects of the pandemic and to keep students on track with their education at Norwalk Community College.

“We are making this grant to help support student success,” the president of the foundation said. “We are particularly interested in making sure that students have enough food to eat during the Christmas season and during the winter intersession, as well as addressing other immediate critical needs such as money for rent, utilities, childcare and transportation.”

Carrie Bernier, Executive Director of the NCC Foundation said, “We are tremendously grateful to be awarded this grant, which could not come at a more critical time. NCC Students are working hard to remain on track with their studies, and to achieve their dream of earning a college degree. Thanks to the support of our partners in the community like this generous foundation, we can continue to help students when they need it most.”

The pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on NCC’s student population. At NCC many students live paycheck to paycheck in multi-generational homes in which they are responsible for the care of relatives while they work part-time or full-time in addition to studying. NCC students and their immediate family members often work in customer or patient facing roles and have faced exposure to COVID-19 while the crisis has grown.

Students who do not own a computer, or share one with family members, have also faced being left behind during remote learning. Since March, the NCC Foundation has distributed over 200 laptops to students, as well as over 300 grocery store gift cards and has increased funding for NCC’s on campus food pantry to support food insecure students. The foundation making this generous grant to our student emergency fund was an early supporter of the emergency laptop fundraising in the spring of 2020 that resulted in the establishment of a fund that has continued to provide laptops to Norwalk Community College students for the past nine months.

For those who wish to help Norwalk Community College students achieve their academic and professional goals, a gift to the NCC Foundation can be made at ncc-foundation.org/donate.