Almost 900 community members attended the Issaquah Schools Foundation’s 17th annual Nourish Every Mind Luncheon on May 14 at the Issaquah Community Center and donated $617,000 for local schools.
The program featured several students and educators who spoke passionately about the foundation’s impact on education.
Ashton Herrild described how the foundation’s Healthy Youth Initiative helped him redefine himself in his recovery from drug addiction and find his calling as a filmmaker. Through the Influence the Choice video contest, a program of the Healthy Youth Initiative’s Drug Free Community Coalition, Ashton has produced several videos aimed at reducing youth substance abuse.
“The only thing worse than being lost is not being looked for,” Ashton said. “Because of people like you, youth in our community are learning that it doesn’t matter how hard you fall. What matters is how you get up, and where you go from there.”
Clark Elementary School educator Shaun Cornwall and fifth-grade students Cole Pak and Ajay Santiago told attendees about Scratch Programming Clubs, introducing elementary students to computer science through a simple, web-based programming language.
“Most jobs today need coding to be successful,” Ajay said. “Without Scratch, learning programming and coding would have been very challenging for me.”
Attendees also heard from literacy specialist Carolyn Kaiser, who expressed gratitude for the foundation’s support for educators, and eighth grade students Shona Carter and Hannah Chernin, who spoke about the foundation-funded financial literacy curriculum.