SFIC hosts celebratory event for Catholic school students

SFIC Board Chairman Joe Hughes and SFIC board member Michael Roleck each briefly addressed the attendees before everyone enjoyed the taco bar and music.

“We want to stay connected with our students,” said Jasmin Roman, Director of Scholarship Programs at the SFIC. “We are trying to get our recipients more involved before and after they graduate, which is why we had the event.”

Roman, calling the first senior celebration a huge success, plans to make it an annual event for SFIC’s students. The SFIC staff hopes to encourage students to stay connected with the organization after graduation. The SFIC is planning more student events in the future, including a planned event in May to celebrate the students’ high school graduations.

SFIC is also hosting a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration on Sept. 17 for the community with live music and Hispanic food.

SFIC was founded in 1983 as the Fund for Educational Advancement with its mission “to provide children in need with the opportunity for a quality, values-based education in a safe environment,” according to the SFIC website.

The Fund currently offers 50 scholarship programs that provide partial tuition assistance for students in grades K-12 from low-income families currently or planning to enroll in a private, parochial school located in the Archdiocese of Newark within Bergen, Essex, Hudson, and Union counties. Forty-nine of the programs are donor-designated programs with program-specific eligibility requirements in addition to income eligibility. The SFIC also has one general tuition assistance program for students whose families meet the income eligibility requirements.

The Fund also recently partnered with the Archdiocese on the “Torch of Learning” campaign. The new three-year initiative aims to match the $150,000 the Archdiocese of Newark provides yearly to fund its “We Are Living Stones” Catholic Tuition Assistance Program offered through SFIC. Established in 2021, the yearly “We Are Living Stones” program gives $1,500 scholarships to 100 underprivileged students of the Catholic faith attending archdiocesan schools in Newark, Jersey City, East Orange, Union, and Fairview. The goal was to support an additional 100 students who fit the “We Are Living Stones” criteria with $1,500 scholarships each year over three years, concluding with the 2024-25 school year.

SFIC has provided partial tuition assistance to 58,200 Catholic school students since its inception in 1983. Based on the most recent available data, in 2020, $2.33 million in scholarships was awarded to low-income Catholic school students and families across the Archdiocese. In 2021, SFIC earned the GuideStar Gold Seal of Transparency for providing good financials and people information to their donors.

“Each year, the number of students awarded differs,” said Roman. “For the 2022-23 school year, we have awarded 1,862 students partial tuition awards.”

SFIC is celebrating its 40^th Anniversary this year. To learn more about the Fund or to support the mission and programs of the SFIC with a donation, you can visit www.sficnj.org, or mail checks to The Scholarship Fund for Inner-City Children, 171 Clifton Ave., Newark, NJ 08817.