Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio. It's 840. Our monthly visit with a member of the Geneva Rotary Club happens today, and it just so happens that the treasurer for the Geneva Rotary, Bob McFadden, is in the house. Good morning, Bob. How are you, sir?
Bob McFadden: Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to have you here. And you, as a treasurer, are essentially the money man.
Paul Szmal: That's right. I'm kind of involved in every project, and Rotary's involved in quite a few things.
Bob McFadden: Yeah, most definitely. And one of them happens to be the student loan program. How did this whole thing get started?
Paul Szmal: So it's one of the community's oldest service programs that have been running continuously. So it's been running over 100 years. It was established in 1923, just four years after the Rotary Club was formed in Geneva. And at the time, the president was Fred Brownlee, the owner of Red Jacket Farms back in that time. It was established just as a community service project to help fund those that needed extra help to go to college. And that just started as a simple idea and grew from there. Over the years, Rotarians have donated money so that the program had grown, and Judge Lapham made a significant estate contribution, really, to bring it to what it is today, and we've invested the money so that it can serve many. And so we are able to give out interest-free student loans to Geneva high school students, and we've been doing that for quite some time. So we have currently 70 students with $185,000 out in interest-free student loans, 60% of which are in repayment, and 40% are deferred while they're still in school.
Bob McFadden: Oh, I didn't know that was an option to be able to do that. That's great.
Paul Szmal: So we have great partners at the Geneva high school. The counselors just let students and their families know that this exists, and it really is just, it's a revolving loan fund, essentially, that as students repay us, we lend those dollars out to the next graduating students.
Bob McFadden: Right. And it just continues, and it should continue forever.
Paul Szmal: Wow. Wow, what a great program to put together.
Bob McFadden: Yep. And then we have just, the committee of Rotarians just keep it going, you know, just as volunteers. And working with students and families and education, we'll go in on the nights for financial aid nights at the Geneva high school, and we'll go in and just let them know about our program as well. And, you know, the cost of college is incredible and continues to go up. $1,500 a year isn't necessarily going to take care of all of it, but what we tell parents and families and the counselors is that it kind of all goes together into a package. So you'll have financial aid from the school, you know, this helps, and this will be the only interest-free, you know, loan that students make it. And it can add up to, it's $1,500, but for each year it can add up to $6,000. And that is helpful if it's interest-free.
Paul Szmal: Oh yeah, absolutely. And as you pointed out, again, you can actually defer the payments and start making the payments on that once you graduate college so you don't have that pressure on while you're in school to try to pay it back as you go.
Bob McFadden: That's right. And so it fits in that package and it's a great program. It's been harder to get the word out, so I appreciate you having me today because we can't go directly to the parents who are making those financial decisions for the kids often. And so this was great that you had me on. I appreciate it.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and there's no academic requirement or anything for this, is there?
Bob McFadden: Right, that's a good point. We, you know, the students should be in good standing, but we don't look at income, we don't look at credit scores, we don't look at, you know, we get a transcript just to make sure they're in good standing. But, you know, that isn't the qualifier that you would normally see for either a scholarship or a loan program where they're looking for your ability to repay back and credit scores and things like that. So that is not included in our program.
Paul Szmal: I'm curious, do any of the, have any of the students who have gone and gotten a student loan program and then gone through the payback process, have any of them come back with any success stories or words of encouragement for others?
Bob McFadden: Yeah, often when the students pay their loan off, we get thank you letters for, you know, being there for the students. We're also involved in the high school and the Interact program, which is like an Interact high school version of Rotary. Right. We support students going abroad and the exchange programs. Rotary is a big supporter of exchange programs. So we're often involved in many ways. And we do service projects together with Rotaract and Interact and the Geneva Rotary Club. So we definitely have, you know, relationships with the students over time, working with them on volunteer projects in the community. And often they are very appreciative when they get out of school.
We had one story that, you know, there was a student that was a senior and then their funding package significantly changed where she thought she was going to have to drop out of school.
Paul Szmal: Oh.
Bob McFadden: She reached back out to Geneva Rotarian and said, you know, I think I'm going to have to drop out of school. And that Rotarian kind of went around in the community and tried to figure out how we could help her get through. And she did. I think she's graduating now. So we helped her get through this past year with our program and others in the community that got involved to help her just get through that last year. But otherwise she was facing, you know, dropping out after three years.
Paul Szmal: You know, it really is amazing to me, too, how the Rotarians have kind of developed this whole network of individuals, corporations, businesses, organizations, so on and so forth. It's great to be a part of.
Bob McFadden: You know, we're all looking out for the best interest of the community and work together. If there's a need, you know, we quickly can talk and try to see if we can figure out something for whatever it is.
Paul Szmal: Now, is there a application window, shall we say, for the student loan program?
Bob McFadden: It's actually going on right now. You know, from about now through about mid-June is what that period is. So we are reaching out to students that are in the program to see if they're going to continue. So we're reaching out to see if they need new advances for the next year. We're also starting to receive applications for this cycle. So it's kind of going on right now. So if anyone is interested in listening at home, the applications are at the guidance counselor's office in Geneva High School, and then they can get it to us, and then we're reviewing them now.
Paul Szmal: All right. And let's slip a quick plug in, too, for the weekly Rotary activities if you want to participate and become a member. We meet weekly at Dana's Time Out, and we'd love to have you just stop by. We meet at noon. It's a lunch meeting. We often have speakers come in, and that's really what gets us together every week. We do service projects, you know, just ongoing as needed throughout the community, whether it's participating in a lakefront cleanup or a roadside cleanup or, you know, getting together with the community lunch program. There's just tons of opportunities, whether it's social or service or, you know, just supporting that network of each other.
Bob McFadden: All right. Well, Bob, I appreciate you coming in and filling us in on the student loan program.
Paul Szmal: Thank you, sir.
Bob McFadden: Thanks for having me, Paul.
Paul Szmal: All right. It is 848 on FLX Morning.
