About EEF
Mission
The Elkhart Education Foundation (EEF) ignites the power of community, connects generous hearts with education, and provides the resources needed for EVERY child to excel inside and outside of the classroom through extraordinary learning experiences.
Vision
We envision a school system that is an example for all schools in Northern Indiana — one that provides opportunities for all students to discover their “spark” while encouraging college and career readiness.
Purpose
The Elkhart Education Foundation (EEF) works with Elkhart Community Schools (ECS) to enhance community efforts and to ensure that ALL students have the resources, opportunities, and experiences needed to develop life-long learners. Through innovative programming, EEF inspires the community to support public education, so that we can ignite a love of learning in our Elkhart students.
EEF solves the challenges that prevent students from learning and thriving. Even though EEF’s primary focus is to level the playing field for students in need, our initiatives impact every student during their K-12 education journey.
History
In 2013, EEF’s founding Executive Director discovered that other public school districts, similar to Elkhart Community Schools (ECS), had an education foundation to engage community members and inspire them to be proud advocates of their schools. Because
Elkhart is known as the “city with a heart”, EEF became determined to fill that gap for ECS by building an education foundation that would “ignite the power of community, connect generous hearts with education, and provide the resources needed for every
child to excel inside and outside of the classroom through extraordinary learning experiences.”
In 2014 EEF became a non-profit entity and received its 501(c)(3) designation from the IRS and was actively engaging with ECS in order to find the best ways to enhance the existing work of ECS as well as find new and innovative ways to bring extraordinary
learning experiences to all ECS students. Over the ten years EEF has been working to support ECS, numerous grants and programs have enhanced efforts to educate and inspire the children and youth in our community.
