Carpe Mundi is committed to making transformational study abroad opportunities available to students that might not otherwise have access to these experiences, including low-income students that are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant. For the past nine years, we’ve strategically leveraged various resources to make our programming as affordable as possible for our students. Those resources have included generous donations from you and our community of supporters, in-kind scholarship donations from Carpe Diem Education, and using students’ Federal and State Financial Aid through Portland State University. All of these resources are crucial for making this opportunity feasible for our students.
Unfortunately, Carpe Mundi received news earlier this summer that Federal and State Financial Aid will be temporarily unavailable to our students for the foreseeable future. Portland State University’s Financial Aid Office is being audited by the Department of Education, and until this audit is finished, PSU is unable to issue financial aid to our students. Fortunately, our students are still able to earn two terms worth of PSU credit for their study abroad experience, they just won’t be eligible for financial aid for those credits. We learned this news after recruiting two cohorts of students who are eager to travel during the 2021-22 school year, nearly half of whom have waited over a year due to Covid postponing our 2020-21 programming.
Our number one priority is ensuring that this decision impacts our current students as little as possible. They have worked hard to access this opportunity, and we are committed to making this experience a reality for them. While financial aid varies from student to student, a student would typically average around $6000 in Federal and State Financial aid to be applied to their study abroad costs. Our students simply cannot afford to bear that cost. Fortunately, Carpe Mundi has developed partnerships to allay a significant amount of that cost burden. However, Carpe Mundi still needs to raise an additional $15,000 above and beyond our annual fundraising initiatives to cover the loss in financial aid. Our 10th Annual Gala and Auction on November 11th will have our largest fundraising goal to date - $50,000 - in order to continue to make our programming accessible to our students.
With your support, Carpe Mundi students and our community have persisted through a challenging past year and a half. We are more committed than ever to ensuring students will travel, safely and affordably, in February, 2022. We are consistently reminded of our students’ learnings while overseas: the importance of flexibility, seeing situations through new perspectives, and understanding that persevering through challenging situations makes you stronger and more confident in the future. We know we will overcome this new challenge, and will be stronger for it in the long run. Thank you for being on this journey with us.
If you have any questions about how this change in financing will impact programming, please reach out to Rachel Anderholder - rachel@carpemundi.org.
To learn more about our fundraising efforts this Fall, click the link below.