Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key lands grant

The Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key has received a $5,000 grant to fund their ongoing efforts to support tutoring with Sarasota organization Children’s Guardian Fund. 

Kiwanis has funded students through tutoring in the past with donations and fundraising totaling about $35,000. This grant will help new kids in the CGF programs get one-on-one tutoring for six months. CGF serves local foster children, who often get off track in school due to volatile family situations. They try to cycle kids in and out so they can get as many caught up as possible, said CGF Executive Director Svetlana Ivashchenko.

The grant comes at a critical time for CGF, said Ivashchenko. It will help tutoring keep going throughout the summer, whereas before, the organization planned to pause summer services due to lower income during the pandemic. 

“Now that we've had so much support, it looks like we may be able to continue tutoring ongoing through the summer months, which is really exciting,” Ivashchenko said. 

The club has a service element attached with the grant. When the club applied, it proposed interviewing club members about their careers and creating a video database for kids in CGF to browse so they can see the different paths to success. 

“Hopefully, they can start thinking about their educational paths and their future careers that they want to have,” Ivashchenko said. “Hopefully, we generate enough interest from the kids …  say they get really excited about Lynn (Larson)'s story of becoming a nurse and how that took her forward in her career. Maybe I could set up a call with Lynn and a particular child who's interested in learning more.”

Larson, Kiwanis president, has chatted with members to gauge interest and is considering opening up the database to those outside the club as well. A former nurse, Larson took many twists and turns from high school in Mississippi, including a failed attempt to get a factory job and supporting her family as a young mother until she found the thing she wanted to make her career. 

“What motivated me originally was getting turned down for a factory job,” Larson said. “I was so disappointed, but it ended up being the best thing that happened to me … It's not always a straight line to get to where you want to be, and sometimes you may not even know where you want to be, but opportunities open up.”

The database is only in its early stages, and Ivashchenko is still working on figuring out the technology for it, but the club is excited to get it going. 

“These kids may get bored by these old people, you know, who knows?” Larson said. “But hopefully, we can try to give them some ideas.”