On Mar. 14, 2025, East’s LINCC, Honors English 9, and 10 students presented ten local non-profit organizations with a total of $7,000 in grants, with help from Magnified Giving.
Magnified Giving is a non-profit organization based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that aims to create confidence, empathy, and compassion within the youth.
Through their Youth Philanthropy program, Magnified Giving collaborates with local high schools to allow the students to choose which non-profit organizations deserve the grants given to the school to distribute. East has partnered with Magnified Giving’s Youth Philanthropy Program since 2013.
East freshman English teachers, Roxanne Begley and Abby Schwetschenau were excited that this project was easily implemented into Lakota’s new English curriculum.
“They’re not only doing the standards for school, but they’re also making a difference in our community,” Begley told Spark.
This year was the first year Schwetschenau assigned this project to her students, and she had a great first impression.
“It was really cool to see how much these kids cared,” Schwetschenau told Spark.
Schwetschenau and Begley shared similar experiences in the change of their students’ behavior when they participated in this project.
“It lights more of a fire under them and puts them into a passionate mindset for what they are doing,” said Schwetschenau.
East’s student participants chose and researched a social cause and a local non-profit organization that fights their cause. Schwetschenau and Begley suggested their students find a cause or non-profit organization that has a personal connection to the student. The Honors English 9 students then created a slideshow for a persuasive presentation.
The Honors English 10 students were encouraged to conduct interviews with representatives from their nonprofits to help build a connection and deepen their research. The Honors English 10 students made a public service announcement video about their social cause and nonprofit.
The nonprofit presentations were shown to the class to persuade students’ peers that their organizations were the most deserving of the grant money. A voting process followed the final presentations until there were ten finalists that were given either a $500 or $1,000 grant.
East sophomore Megan Hoffman won a $1,000 grant for the organization in which she advocated, The Cure Starts Now, an organization which funds research for pediatric brain cancer cure.
“This project has impacted me by making me feel a lot more connected with the community,” Hoffman told Spark. “It has made me see how good it can feel to help others.”
The $500 grant recipients were Megan Clark with Move Beyond Surviving, Winni Weng with Cincinnati Icebreakers, Jack Snider with 1N5, Violet Pitzer with Companions on a Journey, Mikayla Chiulli with Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Cincinnati, and Taylor Ferguson with Shriners Children’s Ohio.
The $1,000 grant recipients were Megan Hoffman with The Cure Starts Now, Gabe Blenman with The Barracks Project, Maddie Orlando with Karen Wellington Foundation, and Ainsley Rauch with Shine Like Sable.
The grant winners and a representative from the winning organizations were invited to a ceremony where the students presented the grant money from Magnified Giving to the nonprofit representative. The $1,000 grant winners’ presentations were shown.
