Children’s Scholarship Fund for Girls

Our History

Girls from Central and South America experience the highest school drop-out rates in the US. Kathleen Crane took up this challenge in 1991 by founding the Children’s Scholarship Fund for Girls (CSFG) believing that education is the only way to empower these girls to develop productive and self-sufficient lives.

The CSFG supported needy girls living on Long Island, NY who had fled the war in El Salvador. They lived in impoverished surroundings and attended overcrowded schools plagued by violence. Over the years, the scope of the fund has broadened to include needy migrant girls from many Central and South American countries.

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 girls’ cultural heritage.

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.

The creative arts are important in enriching a girl’s life. We stress the creative and performing arts both during the school year and in a very productive collaboration with USDAN Summer Camp for the Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights on Long Island, New York.

The CSFG in Haiti

The 2010 earthquake brought the CSFG to Haiti and we now support teachers and a cohort of students at the Foni Bo School in Gros Morne, an impoverished mountain town sixty miles north of Port-au-Prince. In addition to providing tuition fees, uniforms and books, the Fund supports a daily hot lunch. The nutritious meal uses locally grown products and is prepared by women living in town. The education of children is part of a Medicine For Peace’s comprehensive program in Gros Morne providing women’s health, maternal and neonatal care, and food for the disabled.

Kathleen Crane teaching at the Foni Bo School in Gros Morne