On June 10, Rec and Park accepted a generous gift of $15,625 from Mercedes-Benz USA, enough to fund 125 summer camp scholarships of $125 each in celebration of the 125th anniversary of the automobile.
While Mercedes turns 125 this year, the carmaker’s Gullwing Group International turns 50. Gullwing was founded 50 years ago in San Francisco on June 16, 1961, to preserve and restore the Mercedes Benz 300SL Coupe and Roadster. That same year, they took a photo of the cars at Fort Point, and 50 years later, we were on hand with the folks at Mercedes to help recreate that picture.
On behalf of our department and the thousands of kids who rely on our scholarships each year, I want to thank Mercedes for this great gift.
This gift is very important to us for two reasons. It supports our scholarship program, which is one of our top priorities, and it’s an example of exactly the type of public-private partnerships the department is working to build to help keep our parks clean and our programs accessible.
Scholarships enable RPD to fulfill its mission of providing enriching recreational activities to ALL San Franciscans even those who might not be able to afford our low-cost, high-quality options.
Demand for our scholarships is skyrocketing. Already this year we’ve awarded $450,000 in camp scholarships, compared to $180,000 for all of last year. This is happening because we’ve dramatically expanded and improved our recreational offerings and are reaching out to more people than ever before.
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