SPOKANE, Wash. – LaunchNW has secured $500,000 in scholarship funding from the Washington State Legislature, which will benefit Eastern Washington high school seniors.
The funding from the scholarship will be available to students residing in Spokane County, Garfield County and Columbia County who have a household income at or below 150% of median household income levels in Washington State.
Seniors at Medical Lake, East Valley, Riverside, North Central, Shadle Park, Liberty, Lakeside, University and Cheney High Schools become eligible for the scholarship by participating in the Mpower Mentor Program.
“The opportunity to engage with our legislators and bring post-high school funding to our local students is critical,” says Shelly O’Quinn, CEO of Innovia Foundation. “This investment and partnership with LaunchNW will open up a landscape of post-high school supports and opportunities to students who have never before had access to them.”
As announced at Innovia Foundation’s annual Community Leadership Summit last March, regional rural communities that opt into the LaunchNW initiative can unlock scholarship funding for their communities.
Adopters of this opportunity include Columbia County and Garfield County. Community leaders raised over $100,000 in their communities to bring the LaunchNW scholarship to the 2024 graduating class of seniors.
“LaunchNW has been implemented initially in Spokane County, but has always been intended to expand throughout Innovia Foundation’s 20-county region,” says Ben Small, Executive Director of LaunchNW. “We believe that the impact of this initiative will be far-reaching, and that the youth and family-serving strategies we have developed in Spokane can serve as a starting point for regional communities to develop their own version of LaunchNW.”
