A Real Estate Leasing and Development Company
400 Salmon Way, PO Box 149
Unalaska, Alaska
907•581•1276
Sharon Svarny-Livingston
This article by Sharon Svarny-Livingston, President of the Foundation's Board of Trustees, was published in The Eider Pointer, a newsletter for OC shareholders, in September 1998, and has been edited and updated .
The Ounalashka Corporation Board of Directors believes in education. Education plays an integral part in our mission for the Corporation which is "to continue as a prosperous corporation through excellence in education and management to benefit shareholders thereby strengthening Unangan culture, and to become the premiere village corporation." With this goal in mind, the Ounalashka Corporation set out to dedicate funds for the continuing education of our shareholders and their descendant. To achieve this goal, we went through a rigorous and time consuming process of creating a non-profit foundation which eventually won the blessing of the United States Internal Revenue Service. With the creation of the Edna P. McCurdy Scholarship Foundation, a completely separate entity dedicated to the funding of educational opportunities for our shareholders and their descendants, the OC Board realized a part of its dream.
Trustees for the Foundation are Margaret A. Lekanoff, Okalena Patricia Lekanoff-Gregory, and myself. We were chosen, in part I believe, because of our past and continuing participation in the educational field. Margaret has been employed by the Unalaska City School for many years as the secretary and registrar. If the truth be known, we always tease her that she actually runs the school! She is dedicated to providing the best educational environment for the future leaders of the Unangan. Okalena has been the Unangan cultural teacher at the school, and continues to offer her services as a cultural expert and consultant when we have special events. She is currently the assistant in the Aleut Language and Culture Program at the school. I served on the Unalaska City School Board from 1992 to 1999, and served as its President for 6 years. I am dedicated to maintaining an excellent educational program in our school, enabling students to be successful in their endeavors in higher education. I also offer my expertise by teaching classes based on aspects of our Unangam culture.
The Foundation has awarded many scholarships over the past eight years. The recipients worked toward degrees in accounting, anthropology, art, business administration, economics, education, hair styling, justice, language, medicine, music, nursing, police science, nursing, sports medicine, and zoology.
We encourage shareholders and their descendants to pursue education and to apply for funding from the Edna P. McCurdy Scholarship Foundation. Applications are available through this website, or write the Foundation at PO Box 149, Unalaska, Alaska 99685.
Please make sure you complete and submit all required documents of the application process, or your application will be declined or funding may be delayed. The excellent standards being set by our scholarship recipients will certainly make the playing filed a little more difficult as time goes on, but excellence is what the Unangan need to prosper and survive. Encourage your children in pursuing lifelong learning. Help them by supporting them in the scholarship application process and by providing additional funding needs. Make sure that you counsel them to apply for as may scholarships as possible form different entities. The Foundation is not able to fully fund all students and awards from other entities allow our Foundation to make additional awards to more students.
Make lifelong learning a goal.
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