8 scholarships set up for firefighters
CRANBERRY TWP — The Cranberry Township Community Chest has already established eight scholarships at Butler County Community College for students who agree to two years of service with a volunteer fire company.
The organization wants to bring that total number to 20 scholarships.
The Community Chest received more than $2,000 in donations in the past week for its 2015 Project of the Year. The most recent donations bring the total raised to $281,097.
The project of the year is a $500,000 initiative aimed at recruiting and retaining more volunteer firefighters in Butler County.
That money will be used to buy a $130,000 emergency trailer for educational, training and recruitment purposes.
The remaining money will be used to establish scholarships at BC3 for anyone who pledges two years of service to a fire company.
Bruce Mazzoni, treasurer of the Community Chest, said, “While I know the Volunteer Firefighter Initiative will not solve all the problems of local fire companies, if we can help fund scholarships for 20 people each year in exchange for their firefighter certifications, we are at least helping to reverse the decline of volunteers in the future,” he said.
Mazzoni added that donations now can be made on the Community Chest’s website with credit cards through the PayPal service. The group’s website is ctcchest.org.
Anyone interested in volunteering their time can also contact Mazzoni through that website.
He said volunteers are needed to stuff more than 19,000 envelopes to be sent out at the end of November to residents and businesses to tell them about the project.
The most recent round of donations include: David and Judy Todd, $1,000; the Kratz and Kling families, $250; Allan and Janet Tedesco, $250; Jackie and Mike Schleiden, $125; Joline McClure, $100; an anonymous donor, $50; Rick and Betty McMaster, $50; Albert and Kathleen Schartner, $50; Michael J. Dittman, $25; the Lahm family, $25; Michael Sibenac, $25; Frieda Regan, $25; Bill and Lynn Graper, $25; Susan and George Verbanic, $25, and Terry Klein, $25.
