A jump on diploma while still in diapers

[MaineDem]

The Alfond foundation expands its $500 gift for college savings to include every baby born in Maine.

AUGUSTA — Fourteen thousand babies could be born in Maine in 2009, and each one will be eligible for $500 to begin a college savings account. So will each baby born in Maine thereafter.

On Thursday, Alfond Scholarship Foundation officials announced they will extend the $500 benefit to every Maine-born baby, a year after the group launched a pilot program at MaineGeneral Medical Center campuses in Augusta and Waterville.

...


The program is the brainchild of the late philanthropist Harold Alfond. The Dexter Shoe magnate never graduated from college and long dreamed of making college possible for Maine children, his son Bill Alfond has said.

Dubbed the Harold Alfond College Challenge, the program doled out scholarship money to more than 1,200 Maine newborns in its pilot year at MaineGeneral.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=227016&ac=PHnws

[notadmblnd]

1. Dexter makes bowling shoes, I've owned many a pair.

This is a good thing for the children of Maine.