The Education Foundation of Sarasota High School in 2017 began to lead a long-standing and inspiring yearly event that celebrates remarkable young people. The program traces its roots back to 1988, when H. Jack Hunkele, a philanthropist who moved to Sarasota, founded the Most Improved Student Program with Northern Trust. The program honored students at two area high schools who had overcome significant challenges to succeed.

Under the guidance of the Education Foundation, the program was renamed the STRIVE Awards, and it expanded to five schools. A year later, it grew to include seven area high schools, and this year it includes eight, with the newest addition of Sarasota Military Academy. 

Through the STRIVE Awards, we now celebrate 40 high school seniors and 40 juniors whose perseverance, grit and positivity serve as a poignant reminder of the human spirit to overcome adversity. Theirs are stories of resilience in action. 

This year’s STRIVE Award recipients have lost loved ones, battled cancer, nursed parents, fled their country in the face of war, found themselves homeless and recovered from terrible accidents. Some of the students have already weathered more setbacks than many will experience throughout much of their lives. Yet they persist and envision a future where they succeed and reach their full potential. 

Each spring, at award ceremonies at the area high schools, these students are honored and their stories highlighted. These stories stay with me long after the ceremony. Painful as they are, the hope and resilience in the stories serve as a reminder of the duty a community has to support students who most need extra assistance to realize their dreams. Because with every STRIVE story are caring, compassionate people who support these students—who give them a place to stay or hold their hands at the hospital.

On Sunday, April 28, in conjunction with its first Ringling Bridge 5K/10K Run, the Education Foundation will host its Well-Being Expo, another first. The Well-Being Expo was born out of the belief closely linked to the STRIVE Awards that young people are remarkable and deserve to access resources that will help them find well-being and step confidently into their lives after high school.

Held at The Bay’s Civic Green Lawn, the expo will bring together the Education Foundation, the Sarasota County School district, youth-serving organizations and service providers from across the county to illuminate the characteristics of well-being as well as to share much-needed resources for students and families. Families need easier access to information and support systems to develop positive, strength-based resiliency skills that will help their children thrive.

The very nature of an expo carries this important symbolism, one deeply embedded in the stories of STRIVE Award recipients: we’re all in this together. Across Sarasota County, as across the country, students have struggled but have persisted, and that knowledge alone, knowing that they all have unique strengths to offer, is so important. 

Yet knowing that others have kept going in the face of setbacks isn’t enough. It’s essential students also know there is a community behind them, ready to lift them up and, no matter how great the challenge, help them strive to succeed.

Jennifer Vigne is president and CEO of the Education Foundation of Sarasota County.

Learn more about the Well-Being Expo and how you can get involved here.

Learn more about the STRIVE Awards here. 

Photo courtesy Education Foundation of Sarasota County.

Many who know me know that I truly believe in the value of teamwork. Collaboration is critical to making visions become reality, and this is a guiding principle for me, whether I’m considering my favorite football team—The Chiefs!—or contemplating how our Community Foundation can achieve the greatest impact. 

Just a few short weeks ago, our Community Foundation hosted the region’s third 2Gen Summit, convening practitioners, policymakers and parents to celebrate community progress in 2Gen—or two-generational—approaches to strengthening families and to explore new ideas for catalyzing 2Gen strategies.

While whole-family approaches to well-being have existed since the dawn of civilization, the idea gained prominence as a solution to the social problem of intergenerational poverty and ancillary issues of health, education and social capital through the work of Ascend at the Aspen Institute, whose founder and executive director Anne Mosle delivered the keynote at the summit. 

During her keynote, Anne invoked the saying, “a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child,” a sentiment that rings true for many parents. It underscores the interdependency of parents and children and may explain why supporting either parent or child in isolation often falls short of creating sustainable, holistic progress for families. The components of 2Gen—the multigenerational, multifaceted indicators of well-being—are all interdependent and interwoven, like a tapestry. 

It can feel like a tall order to tend to both parents and children on fundamental foundations of a thriving life. It might be a chicken-egg proposition to figure out which components of well-being to address first: financial assets, education (early childhood, K-12, adult), physical and mental health, or social capital, which is the human support network people need to flourish. You can’t weave a tapestry out of a single thread, after all.

That’s where collaboration enters. Anne Mosle called for “radical collaboration” to propel the work of 2Gen, noting changing systems through collaborative contributions of the nonprofit and public sectors, along with parents themselves, will make a big difference in family well-being that can be sustained long-term. 

Now is the perfect time to catalyze collaboration. Recently, our Community Foundation published a Community Indicators Dashboard that offers rich data on well-being for the four-county area our foundation serves—Charlotte, DeSoto, Manatee and Sarasota counties—and provides projections into the future on defining aspects like population growth. 

A dive into the data reveals sobering statistics about Sarasota County: 

• Currently, 38% of all residents in Sarasota County live at or beneath the ALICE (asset-limited, income-constrained, employed) threshold, meaning roughly 75,000 families are struggling to afford necessities, despite working and earning an income. 
• More than half of all students enrolled in Sarasota County public schools qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, and this proportion climbs to above 90% in several Sarasota schools. 
• Half of all middle and high school students report feeling chronically depressed. 

It is clear there is a need for intervention. 2Gen solutions can help families by providing pathways to prosperity and well-being, so they can create stability that enhances their quality of life, health and happiness.

Since our Community Foundation began grounding our work in 2Gen philosophy, we have witnessed tremendous results—parents earning credentials that open doors to lucrative careers, their achievements providing a sturdy bedrock for their children. This is great news for those families; research tells us the two most reliable predictors of a child’s success are their parents’ educational attainment and income. And it’s also great news for the community, which can receive the gifts the family has to offer rather than run interference when a rippling crisis demands it. 

Collaboration is key to these strategies. Putting our heads, hands and hearts together, we can make transformative change that has the power to enhance our entire community, immediately and for generations, weaving a rich tapestry with each strand holding its load and reinforcing others. 

Roxie Jerde is president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Sarasota County. 

Photo courtesy Community Foundation: Anne Mosle.