Three La. HBCUs in the running to receive Home Depot grant
22nd March 2021 · 0 Comments
By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer
Three Louisiana HBCUs are in the running for funding from a grant program sponsored by Home Depot.
Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Grambling State University in Grambling and Southern University at Shreveport in Bossier City are all possible recipients of grants worth from $20,000 to $75,000 per school as part of Home Depot’s Retool Your School program, which provides a total of $1 million in funding to help historically Black colleges and universities across the country make improvements to their campuses.
Thirty grants in all will be provided. Supporters of HBCUs can vote to determine which institutions will receive funding through Twitter and Instagram using each school’s designated hashtag. The hashtags for the three Louisiana candidates are #southernu_rys21 for Southern at Baton Rouge, #grambling_rys21 for Grambling and #sus_rys21 for Southern at Shreveport. Online voting runs through March 15. Votes can also be cast at RetoolYourSchool.com.
Retool Your School founder Melissa Saunders said the program began 12 years ago as has donated a cumulative total of more than $3.1 million to various HBCUs to facilitate campus updates and improvement projects. The $1 million slated to be distributed this year represents a doubling of the amount given by Retool Your School in 2020.
“In 2009, we saw a unique opportunity to deepen our emotional connection with the Black community by tapping into an area that is a cornerstone of the community, which are our nation’s treasured HBCUs,” Saunders said. “We thought to leverage what The Home Depot does best and couple that with HBCUs’ need for funding to make sustainable improvements to their campuses. From there, Retool Your School was born.”
In all, 117 grants have been distributed since 2009, with 87 percent of the nation’s HBCUs taking part and 31.6 million votes being cast by the public.
“With our doubling of the Retool Your School commitment to $1 million for 2021,” Saunders said, “we are making sure that when HBCU students come back to campus, their spaces even further represent the type of environment that will help them become the next generation of our nation’s leaders.”
Schools must opt into the Retool Your School program each year to be eligible. This year, the three named Louisiana institutions opted in. Since the program’s creation, two Louisiana schools have received grants: Grambling State in 2020 and Southern University at Baton Rouge in 2018, 2019 and 2020.
“The projects funded by the program’s grants instill pride among current students, faculty, alumni and community supporters, and will do so for generations to come,” Saunders said. She added that Home Depot, through Retool Your School, “continues to emphasize HBCUs’ vital role in the American higher education system.”
Saunders stressed that HBCUs remain a vital part of American society by educating and uplifting the lives of Black Americans. She noted that HBCU alumni compose 40 percent of Black members of Congress; 40 percent of Black engineers; half of Black lawyers; 70 percent of Black dentists and physicians; and four-fifths of Black judges.
“As many Retool Your School participants know, attending an HBCU is more than a great educational experience – it is a cultural one as well,” Saunders said. “Whether it’s gaining confidence or branching out as a leader, many HBCU alumni attribute their college experience to their personal and professional development.”
Saunders said that programs like Retool Your School can go a long way to preserving essential, historic institutions that for decades have helped educate and advance the careers and lives of African Americans and others.
“HBCUs are crucially important to the American educational system,” she said. “Historically, HBCUs were designed to provide an opportunity for higher education for Blacks as they were not permitted to gain a higher education anywhere else. From the establishment of the first HBCU in 1837 through today, HBCUs provide a cultural foundation for Black students that is not available anywhere else.”
This article originally published in the March 22, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
