ASHTABULA - Key Foundation grants totaling $18,000 are strengthening efforts to reach the Lake and Ashtabula County Hispanic Community through Lakeland Community College and HOLA Journal.

In collaboration with Lakeland Community College, Key has established a scholarship and internship program that will help fund tuition for two Hispanic students and provide each with a paid internship at KeyBank. The bank's support of HOLA (Hispanas Organizadas de Lake y Ashtabula) funds the publishing of The HOLA Journal, a bi-monthly newspaper covering community events, travel, and health issues facing the Hispanic community and spotlighting Hispanic high school graduates from Lake and Ashtabula counties.

While the Hispanic population is the largest growing segment of the U.S. population with a growth rate of 49 percent since 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau), concentrated growth has mainly occurred in pockets in Northeast Ohio such as the Painesville community where Hispanic population has nearly tripled over the last three years. However, the region's Hispanic community still remains largely isolated and underrepresented in the broader community due to language barriers and disparate cultural backgrounds among other factors contributing to the absence of an organized presence.

"We have a tremendous opportunity to help the region embrace the Hispanic community culturally and economically," says Morris W. Beverage, Jr., president of Lakeland Community College. "Key's early involvement in developing our financial literacy program for Hispanic students and recent outreach providing student tuition and employment underscores the important role we all play in lifting barriers. Together we can help overcome language and financial barriers, while easing the economic burden Hispanics face in attaining a higher education in households where, often, everyone contributes to an income supporting multigenerational families under one roof."

Key's support of Lakeland Community College and HOLA Journal complement the following efforts the bank is engaging in to help unite and empower the Hispanic community to play a larger, more active role in the economic, educational, civic, political and social life of Northeast Ohio:

• The KeyBank Hispanic Initiatives Series (http://www.csrwire.com/article.cgi/4404.html) kicked off at the City Club of Cleveland in fall 2005 to engage Northeast Ohio residents and leaders in dialogues moving the Hispanic community. The series invigorates the movement established at Hispanic convention, La Convención Hispana 2004, when 2,000 residents joined with business and civic leaders to set a vision and institute a platform for developing a sound political and social agenda to transform the Latin-American population into a cohesive force across the region.
  
• Key is helping Cuyahoga Community College further increase its Hispanic student attendance through support of the college's scholarship fund, the Hispanic Endowment for Student Success. http://www.csrwire.com/article.cgi/4936.html.
  
• The Key Foundation issued a $1.5 million grant to the Cleveland Museum of Art. In addition to funding the museum's capital campaign, the grant supports programs exploring how diversity and inclusion influence the arts and underwrites development of educational initiatives that will employ Cleveland Municipal School students and expose area college students to Latin-American cultures.
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HOLA
Hispanas Organizadas de Lake y Ashtabula (HOLA) is a nonprofit organization based in Painesville serving the Latino Community, The organization publishes The HOLA Journal bimonthly in both English and Spanish language editions distributed throughout Northeast Ohio.

KeyCorp
Cleveland-based KeyCorp is one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $93 billion. Key companies provide investment management, retail and commercial banking, consumer finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses, internationally. For news about corporate citizenship at Key, visit http://www.csrwire.com/csr/company.mpl?company=993. Contact Key Foundation Senior Program Officer Quentin McCorvey at 216.689.5505, or quentin_mccorvey@keybank.com, for more information about corporate grants.

Note to Editors: For up-to-date company information, media contacts and facts and figures about Key's lines of business, visit our Media Newsroom at Key.com/newsroom.

CONTACTS: (and see below)

Barbara S. Grano
Lakeland Community College
440.525.7327
bgrano@lakelandcc.edu

KeyBank

KeyBank

KeyCorp's roots trace back nearly 200 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $187 billion at June 30, 2024.

Key provides deposit, lending, cash management, and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of approximately 1,000 branches and approximately 1,200 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank Member FDIC.

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