March 11, 2016 2:56 am
Published by Michael
Dorothy Edwards/Staff Bentley Village Foundation Secretary Karen Rosenstein, from left, President Diane Halas and Scholarship Committee Chairman Janys Foley gather at Vi at Bentley Village on Wednesday. The Foundation plans to provide educational scholarships to the staff at Bentley Village as well as provide support for activities for residents. The Foundation plans to provide educational scholarships to the staff at Bentley Village as well as provide support for activities for residents. The Foundation plans to provide educational scholarships to the staff at Bentley Village as well as provide support for activities for residents. The Foundation plans to provide educational scholarships to the staff at Bentley Village as well as provide support for activities for residents. The Foundation plans to provide educational scholarships to the staff at Bentley Village as well as provide support for activities for residents.
When Diane Halas was growing up in Michigan, money was tight.
Even though she attended an inexpensive state university, her father, a barber, struggled to pay her tuition.
To make ends meet, Halas worked as a waitress and then a carhop, and lived with three roommates.
She persevered, worked hard and eventually became a successful health care executive.
Now retired, Halas lives a comfortable life at Vi at Bentley Village in North Naples, a continuing care community with a private golf course, two clubhouses and other comforts like executive chef-prepared meals, yoga classes and housekeeping services.
But as the 73-year-old retiree got to know the staff over the past four years, she realized that many were grappling with the same issues she did when she was young.
“A lot of them looked tired all the time,” she said. “They were working two or three jobs and trying to finish school at the same time.”
So Halas and nine others seven of whom are current Vi residents formed a board of trustees and created the Bentley Village Foundation early this year to help struggling workers in Southwest Florida through scholarships and other philanthropic programs.
The group also is looking into ways to create synergistic partnerships with outside organizations for instance, by bringing music students who want to work with the elderly to Vi as part of a music therapy program for people in the memory care unit.
Such programs will help elderly residents “maintain a sense of connectedness with the larger community,” said Halas, who is president of the new foundation.
The initiative has the backing of VI’s management, said the community’s Executive Director Ann Walsh, adding she was “extremely pleased, although not surprised, at the generous hearts of our residents.”
The foundation has $15,000 in member-contributed seed money, and it hopes to raise funds from residents, their families and those outside the community through galas, silent auctions, golf tournaments and other events.
It’s also working with the Community Foundation of Collier County with the goal of attracting a $1 million endowment.
Because the foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, it also can apply for grants.
Halas, who spearheaded similar initiatives in her working career, thinks it’s reasonable to expect the group will raise $200,000 this year.
Initially, the money will be used to fund scholarships for staffers or their dependents; Halas expects the first scholarship will be awarded this fall.
While Vi reimburses tuition and other education-related expenses for its employees, capped at $5,250 a year, that’s sometimes not enough to pay for all the school expenses a staffer or dependent might incur.
“We’re seeking ways to add to that,” said Janys Foley, 75, a retired public school administrator and trustee of the foundation
Foley the first in her large family to attend college said she was “hopeful that scholarships will be used for nontraditional as well as traditional students,” including those who want to go to a trade or vocational school.
Karen Rosenstein, 72, the secretary of the foundation, said she understood from personal experience how difficult it is for low-wage workers to get a good education.
The daughter of a machinist, Rosenstein was told by her father that there was no money for college, so she entered the work world straight out of college as an administrator in auto sales.
“I took the bus to work,” she recalled.
It wasn’t until she was in her late 20s and had moved to California that she was able to go to college part time, because tuition costs at the state’s universities were then very low.
Later, as she moved up the ladder at Raychem Corp., a California material sciences firm, she was able to get a master’s degree in business administration from the London Business School that her company helped subsidize.
“Corporate America has been very good to me,” said Rosenstein, who eventually became a regional sales manager with the company.
But it’s much harder now for workers to juggle jobs and school than it was when she was younger, she said, because tuition costs have risen dramatically in her lifetime.
“I feel lucky and blessed,” she said.
