The 431 Exchange Awarded $10,000 Boulé Foundation Grant!
We are thrilled to announce that The 431 Exchange was recently awarded a $10,000 grant by the Boulé Foundation!
This important gift will allow us to expand our Scholarship Fund and help more students striving to earn a bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., or vocational certification.
The grant comes at a crucial time. A comprehensive survey of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students, reported about in the publication Inside Higher Ed, found that students of color have been more likely to suffer from hardships as a result of the pandemic. According to the article:
“About 26 percent of undergraduate students said they lost wages from an off-campus job, and 18 percent lost wages from a campus job, according to survey results. About 36 percent of these students also said their families experienced a loss or reduction in income since the pandemic began, and 21.7 percent of graduate and professional students said a family member had reduced income, the survey results said.”
Since 2019, The 431 Exchange has given out over 40 scholarships, totaling $40,000. Thanks to the Boulé Foundation grant, we will be able to award 30 additional scholarships this year (2021–2022).
The Boulé Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the oldest continuously existing Greek-letter post-graduate fraternity primarily for Black professional men. Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity’s membership has included some of the most distinguished men in the world, including W.E.B. DuBois and Martin L. King, Jr.
In fact, one of the earliest supporters of New Orleans’ Adult Education Center (AEC), from which The 431 Exchange was born, was Sigma Pi Phi member Dr. Norman C. Francis, the esteemed longtime Xavier University president.
If you know a deserving student, please encourage them to apply for our next round.
For our winter round, applications will be accepted from December 1–31, 2021; scholarships will be awarded in January 2022. (Looking ahead, for the spring round, applications are open March 1–22, and scholarships will be awarded April 2022.)
For more information, go to: https://431exchange.org/scholarship.
If you have donated to The 431 Exchange, we want to extend a profound thank you. Please consider inviting your friends, family, and colleagues to sign up for our newsletter for scholarship opportunity updates.