“The Domenica Scholarship lifted a weight off my family’s shoulders and allowed me to grow in a place where I truly felt supported,” said Emily, pictured above with her fellow classmates from Camden Catholic. “I will always be grateful for the opportunity and all of the doors the Domenica Foundation opened for me. This community is now another place I call home.”
‘Home’ is a cohort of high-achieving students from Camden who make up the Domenica Scholars program. Sixteen recipients of this scholarship graduated last week. That represents a 100% graduation rate for this cohort. Together, they earned more than $2.5 million in college scholarships and awards. Like Emily who will attend Saint Joseph’s University in the fall, all are moving on to post-secondary education.
Every year, we award Domenica Scholarships to rising ninth graders who are graduating from Catholic Partnership Schools. The scholarships enable them to attend one of four Catholic high schools in the area. Our aim is to help prepare students who might otherwise languish in overcrowded public high schools for success in college and beyond.
Elena Piperno, director of the Domenica Foundation, visited each school to congratulate the graduates—and to hand out T-shirts to remind them of our ongoing support. “It has been amazing to watch these students mature into the compassionate, kind, respectful, and hard-working young men and women they are today,” she said.
These Domenica Scholars were freshman when we began running college trips and other excursions. Elena said, “I’m proud that many of them plan to attend Rowan University and St. Joseph’s University, which were two of the colleges we visited.”
We are so proud of our graduates! Each Domenica Scholarship is an investment in that student and their future. The ROI, as we see it, is what they make of that future.
In her pre-graduation visits, Elena shared this pride and this vision with the students. She also shared the hope that they would stay connected with their elementary and high schools and with Camden.
“I am here for our scholars to support and guide them, but I don’t look like them and don’t have their experiences,” she said. “These graduates are the ones who can lead and inspire younger kids to be what they want to be, to see themselves as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals.”
“Other than that,” she said, “I told them they owe us nothing but to make their dreams come true.”
