ITHACA, N.Y. -- The Heckscher Foundation for Children recently awarded a $900,000 grant to the Cornell Urban Scholars Program, in which students from Cornell University help address challenges confronting New York City's poorest children, families and neighborhoods.

The grant will provide three years of operational funds for the Urban Scholars Program. A Heckscher Foundation grant in 2002, and others that followed, established and propelled the program, which is a collaboration between Cornell's Department of City and Regional Planning, Public Service Center, Cornell Cooperative Extension of New York City and the Cornell Graduate School. The undergraduate and graduate students in the program work with nonprofit organizations and municipal agencies in New York City on advocacy and policy issues, as well as provide applied research.

"The Heckscher Foundation strongly believes in the good work of the Urban Scholars Program, which is helping improve the quality of life for many New York City children, while developing Cornell students' interests in nonprofit and public-sector careers," said Heckscher Foundation Director Peter Sloane.

The Urban Scholars Program sets students up with paid summer internships with some of New York's leading nonprofit or public sector agencies, and it provides weekly seminars, public policy field trips and a weeklong community service workshop during the academic year.

The program is co-directed by Kenneth Reardon, a professor in Cornell's Department of City and Regional Planning, and by Leonardo Vargas-Mendez, who directs the university's Public Service Center.

"The generosity of Peter Sloane and the Heckscher Foundation has enabled students from Cornell to engage in work that has a positive impact on New York City's poorest citizens," said Vargas-Mendez. Added Reardon, "The program has engaged students from across the campus and has had to grow to accommodate the interests of undergraduates who want to know more about the public-service sector before they travel to New York, and now graduate students, whose theses build on the work of the program."In addition to the summer internship program, the Cornell Urban Scholars Program supports an Alternative Spring Break service trip to New York City, Cornell's Nonprofit and Government Career job fair and a high school leadership-training institute at Cornell.

The Heckscher Foundation was established in 1921 to promote the welfare of children. Grants are made for child welfare and family service agencies, education, job training, recreation, music and the performing arts, health and hospitals, summer youth programs and camps, and aid to the handicapped.