Habitat-Evansville, Ivy Tech Announce Major Partnership
Habitat for Humanity of Evansville and Ivy Tech Community College have announced a partnership that will provide free college educations to members of at least five Habitat-Evansville families.
Habitat-Evansville Executive Director Beth Ann Folz and Ivy Tech-Southwest Chancellor Jonathan Weinzapfel unveiled the program, known as “Ivy Succeed,” on June 15 during Habitat’s 14th Annual Faith in Action Breakfast. Old North United Methodist Church on the city’s north side hosted the event, and Rev. Mike Monahan, its pastor, led the opening prayer.
Folz welcomed the large crowd and thanked St. Vincent Evansville for its ongoing sponsorship of the annual Faith in Action Breakfast. Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke joined clergy and many Habitat volunteers for the breakfast.
“We have a very strong community of faith,” Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke told the attendees. “It is a diverse group, but also very strong. Thank you for what you do for Habitat and for all of our non-profits.”
Ivy Tech President Dr. Sue Ellspermann, Indiana’s former Lieutenant Governor, gave the morning’s keynote presentation.
Ellspermann noted that Habitat serves many people who look to Ivy Tech for the education they need. “Your families and our students are working hard and trying to lift themselves and their families up,” she said. “It is not a surprise that Ivy Tech and Habitat for Humanity would dream up this partnership.”
She told the crowd that Ivy Tech has set a goal of contributing significantly to the realization of a statewide goal: that, by 2025, 60 percent of Indiana’s work force has post-secondary training or credentials. As she spoke on June 15, she said that about 41 percent of the work force has such education or credentials.
Increasing that number by 19 points translates to a half-millon students earning degrees or credentials. “Our state has short supplies of people trained or credentialed appropriately to work in industrial maintenance, robotics and automation, and information technology,” she explained. “Jobs in these fields help people leap-frog well into the middle class. Ivy Tech has to step up, and I believe partners like Habitat for Humanity will help us to do that.
“Together and with God’s blessing, we truly can change lives,” Ellspermann said in conclusion.
Weinzapfel and Folz followed Ellspermann and announced the creation of “Ivy Succeed.”
Their goal was to develop a program that would provide incentives and empower people to obtain educations. Weinzapfel said that “Ivy Succeed” is a pilot program, and he and Folz believe it is the first of its type involving Habitat for Humanity anywhere. “We are thrilled to be taking the great work that Habitat does to a higher level,” he said.
