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Fundraiser surpasses expectations

Local college students draw awareness for foster children

Katie Hay

ELKINS — Two college students who launched an online fundraiser that will help a foster child pursue higher education are pleased to announce they surpassed their goals.

Robert Hall, of Elkins, and his friend Katie Hay wanted to create a scholarship to help a West Virginia high school student in the foster care system. They partnered with Together We Rise, a nonprofit agency that is made of motivated young adults and former foster youth with a vision to improve the lives of foster children in America,

The pair kicked off the 90-day fundraiser the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which is known as “Giving Tuesday,” with an initial goal of $2,000. They changed it to $2,500 in December after they already had surpassed their first goal.

In the end, they raised $4,456.33, and 100 percent of the donations will directly benefit a college scholarship fund that will help a West Virginia foster child.

“We surpassed both goals and couldn’t be happier with how the whole thing turned out,” Hay said Tuesday. “Robert and I are just so pleased that the issue is getting some of the attention it deserves.”

Robert Hall

Hall is studying public relations and marketing at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, where he became friends with Hay. Although Hay now attends Loyola University in Baltimore, they remain close and both wanted to do something to benefit children.

Hay is pursuing a master’s degree in clinical practitioning psychology. She spent time in the foster care system as a child, and she said she wanted to do something to help others attend college.

She said studies have shown as little as 3 percent of children in foster care graduate from college. An estimated 400,000 youth are in the foster care system across the country, and 84 percent say they want to attend college, according to research shared on the Together We Rise website.

Hay said they intend to make the scholarship campaign an annual event, and they also want to encourage more people to help foster children in other ways, such as decorating duffel bags for children so they don’t have to carry their belongings in trash bags.

She said they were surprised the scholarship campaign was able to reach so many people — in part because of information shared on social media sites like Facebook.

“We had family and friends donate, of course,” Hay said. “However, we also had an overwhelming amount of support from people we barely knew.”

She said a link to the fundraising campaign “got a couple thousand shares,” and she even got messages from foster children who “aged out” of the system and went on to pursue college degrees.

“I really tried to encourage them to continue telling their stories,” Hay said, “so that other foster children who are feeling hopeless know that it is absolutely an obtainable dream to get a college degree.”

Additional information about ways to help children in the foster care system can be found at the Together We Rise website at www.togetherwerise.org.

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