A Community Keeps Its Promise 

This year, neighbors put $800,000 behind local students. Some of them, for years to come.

Every spring, something quietly happens in Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, and Mountain View. Organizations who have been showing up for this community for decades: Rotarians, Kiwanians, MV Chamber leaders, MVLA Scholars, all pull up chairs around the same table. They’ve read the applications. They’ve talked about the students. And one by one, they decide who they’re going to send into the next chapter with a little more belief, and a little more money, than they started with.

That table has a name. It’s the LAMVCF Community Roundtable, hosted by the Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation (LAMVCF). This year, six of its member organizations committed over $800,000 in scholarships to 81 students across Mountain View High, Los Altos High, St. Francis, Alta Vista, Foothill Middle College, and Mountain View Adult School. Some awards cover the first year. Others are multi-year commitments, partners saying, in effect, we’re with you for the whole journey, not just the first step.

LAMVCF is the connector that holds it together. We build the one shared application that lets students apply to every member organization at once, instead of six times over. We handle the paperwork. We host the roundtable where the decisions get made, so the volunteers who fund these scholarships can spend their time on the part that matters: the students.

“Interviewing these Los Altos and Mountain View seniors is one of the best parts of my year. They’ve earned their place through academics and through how deeply they’ve shown up for our community. We’re honored to help send them to college, many as the first in their families, and they leave us hopeful about what comes next.”  Elsbeth TeBrake, Los Altos Rotary Scholarship Co-Chair.

What makes the Roundtable different is who’s on the other side of the check. Not a faceless fund. Not an algorithm. The retired teacher who’s been a Kiwanian for thirty years. The Rotarian whose kids went to MVHS. The scholars tutors who know half the kids on the list by their first name. They’re the ones reading the essays, weighing the choices, and making the calls.

For the students who opened those envelopes this year, the money matters. But what matters more is the message underneath it: we see you. We believe in what you’re going to do. And we’re betting on you with our own dollars, because we want to.

That’s the kind of promise a community keeps.

For more information about the LAMVCF Community Roundtable Scholarship, visit lamvcf.org/our-programs/lamvcf-community-roundtable-scholarship or contact Arya Patel at arya@lamvcf.org.