Jan 17: The 27th Annual "Living the Dream" Martin Luther King,Jr. Memorial Breakfast

Greetings--

Every year, many students graduating from District of Columbia high schools are unable to attend college because they lack adequate financial support. For over twenty years, The United Planning Organization has worked to ensure that the best and brightest of Washington D.C.’s low-income youth are supported in achieving their academic dreams, despite income barriers. We invite you to join us uniting young people with the opportunity to realize their higher education goals.

On January 17, 2011, the 27th Annual “Living the Dream” Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Breakfast will be hosted at the Omni Shoreham Hotel at 2500 Calvert Street, NW Washington, DC 20008. This event is held annually to raise funds to provide financial support to high school and GED graduates through the Joseph A. Beavers Scholarship Fund.

To date 126 diverse students have received the Joseph A. Beavers Scholarship. Each year since 2006, scholarships totaling $50,000 have been given to five high school and GED graduates. In total $539,000 has been awarded in scholarship funding over the past 20 years. This support has changed the lives of most of these students in a positive direction. Consider these inspiring examples:

One of our 2010 scholarship recipients, Kanesha Overton, will begin her college career at the University of Oklahoma as a bio-engineering student. Kanesha is an aspiring pediatrician and plans to also study diseases and vaccines. Ramoa Hemmings is a 2005 scholarship recipient who recently graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in Horticulture. Ramoa now works for the Disney Corporation as a horticulturist working with soilless gardening for food crops. One of our first Beaver Scholarship recipients is now Dr. Agustin Chicas, who conducts research on the genetic determinant in cellular senescence. As you can well see, the Beavers Scholarship helps catapult our students into exciting opportunities and productive meaningful lives.

We know that you may not be able to attend the Breakfast; however, this is a SPECIAL plea for your organization to place an ad in our souvenir program booklet. Each year over 1,000 individuals attend the Breakfast. This would be a wonderful opportunity to advertise your organization and demonstrate your support of this worthy cause. Your advertisement will to help defray costs so that all proceeds can be used for scholarships to the most deserving low-income students in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.

Please take a moment to review the enclosed materials. The deadline to respond to this appeal is Friday, December 17, 2010.

Our need for your support is urgent! Please respond, you’ll be glad you did!

Sincerely,
Dana M. Jones
Chief Executive Officer
United Planning Organization
mlkbreakfast@upo.org
(202) 238-4698