Press Release – August 2024
Sutton Bank gives $10,000 to FELC for program scholarships
TIFFIN, Ohio — Sutton Bank has provided a $10,000 grant to the Franciscan Earth Literacy Center to help low-income youth in Seneca County to experience FELC’s science workshops and summer camps.
Funds are used to fully or partially pay fees for eligible low-income participants who apply, ranging from $15 for science programs to $200 for week-long camps.
This year, FELC reopened its full schedule of summer camps after the COVID-era shutdown and plans to continue them into 2025. This year, 40% of participants requested scholarship assistance.
“We are dependent on the generosity of local funders and private donations to continue to offer scholarships to low-income youth,” said FELC Board Vice-President Char Pope.
She expressed gratitude for the donation by Sutton Bank.
“If we can all work together, we can continue to provide summer and holiday educational support to our local students in STEM science disciplines and continue to improve their success in their classrooms,” she said.
Photo Credit: Vicki Johnson
Pictured: Brody Fultz (center), market manager vice president at Sutton Bank, recently presented a $10,000 check to the Franciscan Earth Literacy Center to help low-income youth in Seneca County attend FELC’s science programs and summer camps. Accepting the check are FELC board members (from left) Ken Baker, Vice President Char Pope, Treasurer Nancy Hurley and Grant Consultant Ann Keefe.
The Role of Seeing and Feeling in Ecological Conversion
Dr. Miller’s presentation created a Laudato Si’ tapestry of many threads. In attempting to guide his audience through the implications of Pope Francis’ 2001 encyclical call for ecological conversion, Miller used Medieval art and his personal experience in a primal forest to highlight the importance that Laudato Si’ places on “serene attentiveness” to the interdependence of all living creatures on each other. And where His Holiness asks us to use our “painful awareness” of what is happening to the world to turn its many sorrows into our own personal suffering, Dr. Miller suggests that we adopt “Hope” in the manner of St. Thomas Aquinas, who viewed it as a form of Passion, as a call to action rather than despair.
