Bank of the Sierra Donates $28K to Asian Pacific Community Fund for College Scholarship Program
February 22, 2023
Scholarships will be awarded to low- and moderate-income students throughout the Central Valley and Central Coast.
Porterville, Calif. – Bank of the Sierra is excited to partner with the Asian Pacific Community Fund (APCF) to continue its scholarship program with fourteen $2,000 scholarships for low- and moderate-income (LMI) students. The scholarships will be awarded to high school seniors within the Bank’s footprint, which includes Fresno, Kern, Kings, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Tulare, and Ventura counties. A total of $28,000 will financially assist these economically disadvantaged students in their pursuit of higher education.
Since 2001, APCF has managed several LMI scholarship programs and has a strong infrastructure in place to market and administer the scholarship program. This is the third year Bank of the Sierra has partnered with APCF to support a scholarship program. Since 2021, 22 students have been awarded $2,000 scholarships for a total of $44,000 donated. Bank of the Sierra engages with community-based organizations in its communities and its employees to volunteer their times to read and review scholarship applications and essays.
Students interested in applying for a scholarship must be high school seniors planning to attend college in the fall of 2023 as a full-time, degree-seeking student. The scholarship is open to all majors and has no ethnicity requirement. Interested students should visit apcf.org/bank-of-the-sierra-scholarship-open for more information and a link to the application. All forms and required materials must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, April 3.
“We’re honored to partner with APCF to help local high school students find a path to college for the third consecutive year,” said Kevin McPhaill, Bank of the Sierra President and Chief Executive Officer. “We will continue to look for new ways to give back to our communities throughout 2023!”
About APCF
The Asian Pacific Community Fund (APCF) was founded 33 years ago by leaders in the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community. The goals of the organization are to increase philanthropy among Asian Americans, sustain and grow the API nonprofit sector, and to advocate for API communities. APCF’s fundraising efforts have included employee giving campaigns, donor-advised funds, giving circles, grant making, scholarship funds, and capacity building initiatives. APCF is the only community-based fund serving API communities in Southern California since 1990. APCF believes that higher education is the best ticket out of poverty and the more education students get beyond high school, the better their prospects are. However, college affordability is always the main concern to students from low- and moderate-income families.
About Bank of the Sierra
Bank of the Sierra is in its 45th year of operations and is the largest independent bank headquartered in the South San Joaquin Valley. Bank of the Sierra is a community-centric regional bank, which offers a full range of retail and commercial banking services with full-service branches located within the counties of Tulare, Kern, Kings, Fresno, Ventura, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara. The bank also maintains two loan production offices and an online branch and provides specialized lending services through an agricultural credit center. Bank of the Sierra is recognized as one of the strongest community banks in the country with a 5-star rating from Bauer Financial.
