CHOICES Education Group Receives $10,000 Grant from Nordstrom

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CHOICES Education Group, a Seattle-based social enterprise, announced today it has received a $10,000 grant from Nordstrom, bringing their total support for CHOICES over the last six years to $252,500. Nordstrom has designated this year’s funding for use in new locations in Arizona and the Los Angeles area of California.

CHOICES Education Group has used past support from Nordstrom to deliver CHOICES to more than 60,000 students in 19 states (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Texas and California), partnering with more than 100 chambers of commerce, service clubs, community organizations and schools, and accumulating over 3,600 volunteer hours by local business and community volunteers.

The new Nordstrom grant will engage approximately 25 local business and community volunteers as CHOICES presenters, and will serve 2,000 8^th and 9^th grade students that would otherwise not have access to the program. CHOICES is an interactive decision-making workshop that empowers teens to achieve academic success in pursuit of their career and life aspirations. In two hour-long sessions, business and community volunteers take students through real-world exercises on academic self-discipline, time and money management and goal setting.

“Every school day 7,000 students become dropouts. The continued leadership from Nordstrom in committing their corporate giving resources to stem this appalling statistic is a powerful example for others to follow,” said Leo Muller, Executive Director of the national not-for-profit. “CHOICES helps kids at a crucial point in their lives, when they are old enough to think realistically about their future but are young enough to still do something about it.”

Through their social enterprise business model, CHOICES Education Group licenses CHOICES to businesses, chambers of commerce and service clubs for an annual program fee based on the number of students served, and then provides the training, materials and support needed to implement and manage the program in local communities. CHOICES is a powerful tool for building and sustaining effective business-education partnerships in local communities. Volunteers from the business community facilitate the program, bringing their real-life experiences right into the classroom and serving as positive adult role models for the students. Other major business partners include Bank of America, Russell Investments and UPS.

About CHOICES Education Group

CHOICES Education Group is an independent 501c (3) nonprofit social enterprise started in 1985 with initial funding from Pacific Northwest Bell (now Qwest Communications). CHOICES has been delivered to more than 6 million students since 1985. The CHOICES workshop is currently being delivered to 200,000 students per year in 47 states in the U.S., three provinces in Canada and two sites in Australia. More information about CHOICES is available at www.choices.org or by calling 1-888-CHOICES (1-888-246-4237).