2022-2023 Grant Recipients

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October 24, 2022 – The Michigan Youth Education Fund is proud to announce its 2022-2023 Student Group Grant Recipients. MiYEF received a record number of applications this year and distributed $4,000 in grant money to impact 172 Michigan students! Learn more about our grant recipients below. This year’s grant recipients represent a diverse group of extracurricular interests from debate and Model United Nations to Cyber Security and Robotics!

Michael Berry Career Center – HOSA

  • Impact: HOSA gives our health sciences students an amazing opportunity to learn new skills and to push themselves beyond the required classroom content. The state competition gives many students the chance to travel without their families for the first time in their lives, giving them the opportunity to grow and expand their horizons.

Lake Orion High School – Leadership 

  • Impact: [MASC State Leadership Conference] allows us as a group to network with other students around the state. We gain valuable ideas and discover new events that we can bring back to our school. Students who attend the MASC conference are better members of our school and community due to the opportunity to meet and network with other schools and see other kids who are in leadership roles in their schools. They come back with a new vigor and excitement to lead in their schools and create new opportunities for their classmates. 

Walled Lake Western High School – Debate

  • Impact: At competitions, students are able to create meaningful connections with other debate students. Additionally, they are able to see what a high level competitors looks like, sounds like, and what the content of their speech is like. Experiencing as many in person competitions as possible will not only allow my students to grow as speakers and learners, but will allow our program to grow. 

Oxford High School – Cyber Security

  • Impact: At the center of CyberPatriot is the National Youth Cyber Defense Competition, which puts teams of high school and middle school students in the position of newly hired IT professionals tasked with managing the network of a small company. Through a series of online competition rounds, teams are given a set of virtual operating systems and are tasked with finding and fixing cybersecurity vulnerabilities while maintaining critical services. Students are given real-world scenarios and it looks great on their resume while they are learning some amazing skills.

Summerfield High School – Robotics

  • Impact: Our students are not only learning important educational skills like math, reading, and technology but they are learning things like how to work together, problem solve, speak to each other with kindness and respect, networking for a common goal, building confidence, and sharing in a process from start to finish. The opportunities presented from joining a robotics team not only help with social skills but can provide the chance for students to learn a skill they did not know they could do or would like to do in a traditional school setting.

Lakewood High School – Gender & Sexualities Alliance

  • Impact: This opportunity empowers students to give back to their greater community, empower themselves and would lead to a stronger sense of self worth. In addition this opportunity allows students to find a new outlet for inclusion, and will help them break some stigma regarding their group.

East Lansing High School – Model United Nations

  • Impact: Students are exposed to a wide range of international issues, as well as a wide variety of viewpoints. Through negotiation and debate, students apply problem solving and critical thinking skills that are not usually used in the traditional classroom. Students become better thinkers and better world citizens by attending model UN conferences.

Unionville-Sebewaing Area High School – Youth in Government

  • Impact: Students have the opportunity learn so much from attending Youth in Government from understanding the judicial and legislative branches, meeting people from all over the state from different cultures and backgrounds, exploring career options that they may think they have an interest in and discovering areas that they may not have known they had an interest in. It is an amazing experience for students and so needed since they have not had many of these types of events since Covid.

Laker High School – Science Olympiad

  • Impact: Laker High School students that compete in Science Olympiad get to experience college level science material and laboratory work. While preparing for this extra-curricular STEM competition, they go above and beyond their high school classroom learning experiences and become more prepared for college science coursework. Students get to dive deep into STEM topics and apply their knowledge against peers from all over the State. At State competition not only do students get to explore MSU campus, but they also get to experience the classrooms and laboratories firsthand.