Princeton-Blairstown Center Thanks Supporters of Successful Links to Youth Golf Outing Fundraiser
To the Editor:
On Friday, September 20, Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC) held its ninth annual Links to Youth Golf Outing at the Fox Hollow Golf Club in Branchburg. The event raised $81,000, which will support PBC’s award-winning Summer Bridge Program. Each year, Summer Bridge offers hundreds of students from Trenton and Newark a high-quality outdoor enrichment experience focused on social-emotional learning, literacy skills, and STEM, completely free of charge.
At the dinner celebration following the outing, student speaker Ashley Diaz Seguay shared her experiences at PBC with the audience. As a member of the Leader-in-Training Program, Ashley spent six weeks over the summer learning and growing at PBC’s Blairstown Campus, where she developed college- and career-readiness skills. Ashley is a high school senior from Newark, and her experience at PBC helped her develop independence, leadership, responsibility, cooperation, and grit.
Ashley explained, “PBC taught me how to be adaptable. As a girl raised in a city, it was quite a shocker to have to put up a tent and cook my own food. I learned how to persevere through a tough time. I learned to work with my group because I couldn’t possibly set up a tent by myself. I had never even seen a tent before. But with my friends’ help, I was able to set it up and put it away without any help from the staff.
The winning foursome for the day was the team from Bank of America NJ Market, and included Sakaya Carpenter, Dwayne Redmond, Jeff Serin, and James Williams.
This event supports the mission of the Princeton-Blairstown Center to serve young people, primarily from historically marginalized communities, by nurturing their social-emotional skills through experiential, environmental, and adventure-based programming. Developing these skills enables participants to engage in self-discovery and transform their communities to create a more just world. PBC strives for a future in which young people exhibit personal resilience and compassion, embrace expanded possibilities for their lives and enact positive change within their communities and the world.
Thanks to our event sponsors: Kathy and Bruce Petersen, Robin and Chris Van Buren, Bank of America NJ Market, The Iyer Family, NRG Energy, Inc., AMSkier Insurance, Tamara Simpkins Franklin, Geeta Govindarajoo and Bruce Ellsworth, David Palladino, Patty and Don Seitz, Mea and Al Kaemmerlen, Princeton Corridor Rotary Club, Suman Rao and Kaushik Arunagiri, Ajanta and Pulkit Shah, Sarah Tantillo, Mark Antin, Peggy and Russell DaSilva, Tiffany and Thomas Field, Lubaina Maimoon and Imran Parekh, PBC Senior Leadership Team, and Payday.
We are also tremendously grateful to our Links to Youth Co-Chairs Heather Reilly and Derek Simpkins for their time, energy, and effort organizing and executing this successful event.