Hilliard Community Center: An Outreach Initiative by Adina

Hilliard Community Center: An Outreach Initiative by Adina - May 2019 Scholarship Essay

My mom and step-father decided to settle down in a suburban area just outside of Columbus, Ohio. Hilliard is a city of 35,939 (as of 2017) with a strong education system, sprawling fields of farmland, and a city strip of restaurants and shops. Growing up in a smaller town, as a middle schooler and high schooler, I found it difficult to do activities outside of school with my friends that didn’t have expenses. If I were to receive a $10,000 grant to benefit my hometown, I would use the money to finance community events and outreach.
The Hilliard community center is located by the pool, with a sprawling amount of land with baseball diamonds, soccer fields, basketball courts and a skate park. However, the community center building itself is quite lacking. It consists of three main rooms: meeting room, craft room and the gym. If possible, I would use some of the money to expand the building space so more events could occur at the same time, or host more unique activities. Currently, the center offers youth, teen, adult and senior activities including crafting, dance, sports and fitness groups. I already knew of the youth events from taking my little sister to her 3 - 5 yr/old ballet over 8 years ago.
However, before researching for the impacts of this grant, I had no idea of the other events due to poor outreach into the community. These events are all free, or require a small fee for attending the entire season of courses. Another section of the grant would go to informing the people within Hilliard of all the free and affordable options for extra-curriculars. This would benefit lower class families who do not have spare income for fun activities, as well as keeping teens entertained outside of school for a low cost. Outreach would include lots of social media advertising to attract the crowds of ages 13 - 30, as well as hiring new staff to go speak on behalf of the community center. The staff would talk in classrooms around the schools, hang flyers in local shops and restaurants, as well as talk with community members regarding what the center can do for them.
I believe that ten grand would go very far in benefiting Hilliard as a whole. The community center already has great opportunities for everyone of any age. Developing a new space and outreach within the area would entice people to use the center more. This would begin a cycle of improvement. Since this is a government funded center, the more people who attend events and host in the meeting spaces, the more money the government will grant the next year, and the next. The few thousand dollars my grant would invest, would turn into a more profitable outcome for the Hilliard community center.