Peoria Promise is:

Economic Development in Your Community: Our economy is directly influenced by the level of education and skills of the work force.  Similar programs in communities like ours have seen:

• Better educated local workforce and corresponding income level increases
• Reduced dropout rate and increased high school graduation rate
• Increased college attendance and completion rate with narrowing of attendance gap by income and race
• 10% enrollment gain following decades of declining enrollment
• 86% of funded students stay in the community
• Increased tax revenues through population growth
• Housing market improvement: Homes sold rose almost 7%, compared to about 5% regional decline. Community median home price rose almost 4%.

A Foundation for the Future: Peoria Promise provides students with 64 credit hours to be used over a 3 year period at Illinois Central College (ICC).

The Community Giving Back to the Community: Funded entirely by individual citizens and businesses of Peoria.

For Everyone: Any student who lives in Peoria and graduates from a public high school is eligible; no minimum high school grade point average (GPA) is required to apply.

“It’s an opportunity to dream.”
- Superintendent Ken Hinton

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Who Benefits from Peoria Promise?
Everyone.  Students, parents, teachers, even local businesses and residents benefit from Peoria Promise.  As more students graduate, Peoria and the surrounding areas will see a boost in the economy as more educated and skilled students enter the workforce and live in the area.

What does my contribution do?
In the first three years of the program, Peoria Promise is projected to fund the college education of more than 1000 public school graduates.  The Peoria Promise Foundation started offering scholarships to the graduating class of 2008.  Thus far, the foundation has supported a total of 242 students during the fall 2008 semester.

“Peoria Promise has afforded me
the opportunity to live my dream
and become a Pediatric RN.”
- Peoria Promise Student

What is needed to continue Peoria Promise?
For the 2009/2010 school year, an approximate amount of $1 million is required to continue our developmental efforts through education.  An ongoing amount of $1.5 million is estimated to be the yearly cost of the program as more students take advantage of the opportunity.

Read a letter from our Executive Director