HAND-UP TUITION ASSISTANCE
Helping local families pay for tuition at quality early learning centers
We believe that every family should have access to the same quality of early learning care for their children (birth to age 5), where they can begin to learn the essential personal life skills they need to thrive. Unfortunately, many families do not qualify for government assistance programs for this, so that's where we help.
"A person's character, when built on a weak foundation,
always needs repairs. Why do we spend money on repairing people instead of spending money on their foundations?"
Joe Santoro
Through our Hand-Up Tuition Assistance program, there is one goal: To invest in and help families in our community (Sumter and Marion Counties in Florida) by subsidizing a portion of preschoolers' tuition at local quality early learning centers.
We partner with quality early learning centers in these three counties and provide a HAND-UP to hard-working families who do not qualify for government-funded pre-K assistance and are struggling to pay for preschool tuition. We pay $160 per month per child enrolled in our program directly to their quality early learning centers. Families can qualify for our assistance based on an application, financial criteria, and an interview.
Through this program, we hope to help ALL children become their best selves by assisting parents to provide care and education for their preschool-aged children at quality early learning centers, where they can learn essential personal life skills and good health habits during their most formative years of childhood. We strongly believe, and scientists and economists concur, that investing early in ALL of our children will build a strong foundation upon which they can build successful lives.
Children with good foundations can win the biggest game -- LIFE!
If you are a working parent with one or more preschoolers and are struggling to pay for their tuition at a quality early learning center, we may be able to help!
Check with your early learning center to find out if they are contracted with us for our program. If they are, click HERE to go to our Documents page to read our parent's flyer, and then look at our Income Eligibility Chart to see if your family size and income fit within our approval parameters.
If they do, download our Pre-Eligibility form and send it to us and we'll let you know if you qualify.
If you own, direct, or work for a quality early learning center in Sumter or Marion County, Florida, and would like additional information about how your center can offer our HAND-UP Tuition Assistance Program to your enrollees, please click HERE to go to the Documents page of this site for informational flyers that outline how simple our program is to implement, as well as the documentation we require from applicants. Or, simply reach out to us on our “Contact Us” page and let us know if you are interested; please include your center’s name, address, telephone number, and the person to contact there. We’ll gladly send you further information about our program and the participation requirements.
How to use santorofoundation.org
This website is a free resource of material to help improve essential personal life skills and emotional intelligence. The material on this website ranges from individual “sayings” to a full personal life skills curriculum program called Alive2Thrive. To help you become your best self, please review all this site has to offer. It is important you pass this site along to others so they can be the best they can be and by doing so we will build the best world.