In loving Memory of Trisha Apte

The check should be made payable to Northwestern University.

Please include a note with the check stating that the gift should go to the Trisha Apte Memorial Fund.

You have an option of making your gift anonymous and/or in honor or memory of another party.

Northwestern University’s Tax ID number is 36-2167817.

Trisha believed that providing opportunities for young people to actively address community needs not only benefits the community, but also helps young people develop the tools necessary to properly shape and participate in civil society and government. She once wrote “The efforts put forth facilitate a generation of opportunities for young people to change their communities for the better and to build essential skills for the future through civic engagement. I want to work with young women as I truly believe that they have a unique ability to create lasting and sustainable change in their communities.” Trisha’s passion for helping those around her has inspired us to set-up this endowment with in her remembrance.

Trisha once wrote the following about community service: “The efforts put forth facilitate a generation of opportunities for young people to change their communities for the better and to build essential skills for the future through civic engagement. I want to work with young women as I truly believe that they have a unique ability to create lasting and sustainable change in their communities.”

This endowment has been established at Northwestern University to honor the life and legacy of Trisha Apte. She spent the last six years of her life in Chicago, first at Northwestern and then with a community of friends from Northwestern. Trisha’s passion for helping those around her has inspired us to set-up this endowment in her memory.

The summer after Trisha graduated from Northwestern, she used her signing bonus to cover her living expenses while she volunteered with a non-profit group in Washington D.C. Trisha’s experience interning for this non-profit helped shape her career perspective, as she realized she could use her business skills towards the mission of improving education, healthcare, and the quality of life for people around the world. In this spirit, we have set up this endowment to provide the opportunity for others to pursue a similarly meaningful summer volunteer experience.

2018 Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP)

Trisha Apte Memorial Fund

2018 Report

Mr. and Mrs. Apte, Ms. Apte, and Mr. Shields, your philanthropy is keeping alive your beloved Trisha's spirit of giving back. True to Trisha's beliefs and values, your generosity is providing opportunities for young people to do work that not only is personally meaningful to them but that also is helping to address real needs in our communities. Thank you.

Nearly 450 students received support from Northwestern Career Advancement's Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP) in the 2017 -18 academic year. This includes five young women who, because of the Trisha Apte Memorial Fund, received the opportunity to complete internships

for mission-driven organizations. While internships remain essential for students to achieve success after graduation, the prospect of unpaid internships forces many students to choose between gaining valuable experience in their field of study or finding a summer job to pay for their education, according to Mark Presnell, executive director of Northwestern Career Advancement. Because of the generosity of incredible people like you, Mr. Presnell says SIGP is able to help bridge the gap: "90 percent of all SIGP recipients would either have to turn down their internships or have to supplement it with a second job if it wasn't for their SIGP stipend."

In gratitude for your support and leadership, we are pleased to share this report about the women whom the Trisha Apte Memorial Fund helped in the 2017-18 academic year, including information about their internships how the experience made a difference to them.

Lauren Adams is a senior majoring in human development and psychological services.During her summer internship, Lauren provided Chicago Freedom School with administrative and organizational support and program information management. She also served as a mentor for young people in the summer leadership institute program. Chicago Freedom School was inspired by the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights era. By fostering youth activism, leadership development, and movement building, it supports and empowers young people to take action for social change and justice in their personal lives and communities. Lauren shares the following story of how her internship experience made a difference in her life-and the life of one of the young people she worked with:

"During the middle of the summer program, one of the young people was having a hard time engaging and enjoying his participation in the program. He came over to take a breather and calm down. He had previously divulged that he had anger management problems, so I was aware of that when he came over and decided to talk through what he was dealing with. He confided that he was going through a lot and had just experienced a personal loss from a shooting.We discussed that his frustrations with the program were likely stemming from that and we discussed how he can approach those frustrations differently while working through the trauma of his loss. He said that he appreciated me a lot and that talking with me just then helped.These kinds of moments were very important for me. Being able to connect with young people and have impactful conversations was the most fulfilling part."

Elizabeth Blair is a junior majoring in secondary school teaching,with a concentration in English. This summer Elizabeth worked to help build English proficiency and personal identity, community, and empowerment for refugee girls through GirlForward, an organization dedicated to enhancing opportunity for displaced girls. Elizabeth planned and carried out classroom activities at an ESL day camp, leading a literature circle and a daily group that fostered community and self-expression through dance, art, sports, and field trips. Elizabeth offers the following insights that she gleaned through her internship experience:

"As part of a unit on community, we asked our students to mark on a map where they considered 'home.' Some girls marked four or five places, as they had been pulled from their home countries to refugee camps to temporary homes all over the world before settling in Chicago. A few chose instead to leave no mark-they considered nowhere home. It gave me a great insight into the unique and complicated relationship displaced people have with the concept of home. Also, it amazed me how 30 people, many of whom came from radically different backgrounds, were able to find common ground in their journeys as refugees."

Cate Ettinger is a senior majoring in social policy and history. This summer, for Heartland Alliance, one of the world's leading anti-poverty organizations, Gate helped lead a summer program for refugee youth who had recently arrived in the Chicago area. During the six-week program, Cate facilitated support groups, field trips around Chicago, and soccer and beach day. She worked with other interns and staff to maintain a safe and trauma-informed environment, helping to manage behavioral issues as needed. After the program ended, she worked in the office, recording case notes on participants and working on Heartland's back-to-school fair and afterschool programs. Gate expresses how your support enabled her to make an important decision about her future:

"SIGP truly made this possible for me. I worked intensively with school-aged refugee youth for six weeks and discovered that I have a passion for working with kids, something I previously did not think I had. Working specifically with refugee youth is something that I believe I want to pursue as a career now. Working with refugees from Malaysia helped me decide to apply for a teaching Fulbright in Malaysia. This experience was the main factor in that decision. It also excited me about the possibility of continuing to work with English-learning kids as a career."

Monica Garcia is a senior majoring in English. This summer Monica worked on a clinical research project through the youth research collaborative,Northwestern Borders and Identities. For her project,which focused on finding the cause of a rare respiratory disease, stie collected data by reading patient medical records and interacting with patients on a weekly basis.She also helped develop a newsletter to keep families affected by the respiratory disease connected with research progress.In the following statement, Monica expresses her gratitude:

"I was able to get more direct exposure to the medical field. I feel so grateful to have been able to interact with patients in a research setting. As a result, I feel more secure in my decision to pursue a career in pediatrics."

Celestine He is a senior majoring in biology. This summer she interned in the quality management department for Riverside Community Care, which is located outside of Boston and provides behavioral healthcare services. Celestine provided administrative support, wrote policies, and led an independent research project on the efficacy of a mental health assessment tool mandated by the Massachusetts government. Below, she shares more about what she learned:

"For my independent project, I needed to lead focus groups consisting of clinicians who were all older and more experienced than me.I had to learn technical skills-how to lead a focus group, how to ask targeted questions without bias-as well as interpersonal skills-how to be confident in myself,how to foster trust so the clinicians would speak freely, etc. This was one of the most challenging parts of my internship, but also one of the places of most growth!"

Although it will never fill the void created by your loss of Trisha, your gift is invaluable to these five women and to the many more young people whose lives have changed over the years as your philanthropy has empowered them to more fully develop into the people they were made to be. Thank you, again.

For more information, please contact Donor Relations: at 847-491-4749 or donor-relations@northwestern.edu - 40023868

2017 Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP)

Nearly 400 Northwestern students participated in unpaid summer experiences as part of Northwestern Career Advancement's Summer Internship Grant Program. These undergraduate students, who received grants of at least $3,000, represented 6 of Northwestern's schools/colleges and went to 29 states, the District of Columbia, and 30 countries. 90% of these students would have had to turn down their summer experience or supplement the experience with a second job had it not been for SIGP funding.

Since its inception in 2007, SIGP has opened doors for students to participate in valuable learning opportunities related to their career field of interest. Thank you for supporting and empowering these students.

Gratefully,
Northwestern University
and the 2017 SIGP Recipients

As a result of Suhas and Megha Apte's generous endowment support and investments in the Trisha Apte Memorial Fund as partners in creating opportunities for Northwestern University's faculty and students to achieve excellence in the classrooms, four ambitious and intelligent students received grants to pursue their dreams during the 2017 Summer Internship Grant Program.