Mia, a scholarship recipient, awarded her middle school student/athlete award.

Girls from Central and South America experience the highest school drop-out rates in the US. The
Children’s Scholarship Fund for Girls (CSFG) has taken up this challenge because we believe that
education is the only way to empower these girls to develop productive and self-sufficient lives.
The CSFG was established in 1991 to support girls who had fled the war in El Salvador to live on Long
Island, New York. They lived in impoverished surroundings and attended inferior schools plagued by
violence. Over the years, the scope of the fund has broadened to include immigrant girls from many
Central and South American countries who live in New York and Washington, DC. The 2010 earthquake
brought the CSFG to Haiti. We now support teachers and students at the Foni Bo School in Gros Morne,
an impoverished mountain town sixty miles north of Port-au-Prince.

Irene and her cello on the USDA campus.

How the CSFG Helps

The CSFG provides tuition support for girls to attend private primary and secondary schools while living
at home. Schools are selected to provide a superior education, as well as a nurturing and safe environment
in which a girl can develop her full potential as a young woman. We provide for books, school supplies,
uniforms, and extracurricular activities. Volunteer teachers and older CSFG recipients commit to tutor
youngsters in the program. We strive to involve both parents and educators in the growth of these young
women while respecting and reinforcing the girl’s cultural heritage. We stress the creative and performing
arts both during the school year and in summer programs at USDAN Summer Camp for the Performing
Arts.

CSFG Successes

Since its inception, the CSFG has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from private donors and grants
to support girls’ scholarships. All our scholarship recipients have gone on to attend college. We have had
graduates from Vassar, St. John’s, St. Joseph’s College, Union, Hunter, Trinity, Boston University, NYU,
numerous SUNY campuses, Columbia, and Harvard. Several of our recipients are now in law and medical
schools.

Kathleen Crane at the Foni Bo School in Gros Morne, Haiti.