Help Emma Burton Go to College

18 year old Emma Burton is an intelligent, creative and kind young woman who has overcome many obstacles to forge a successful high school career and earn admittance to multiple colleges. Living in a single-parent household for most of her high school years, Emma has balanced her schoolwork and extracurricular activities while also dealing with issues that have required Child Protective Services to intervene on several occasions. Those issues came to a head on April 8, 2021, when Emma was abandoned by her mother at a Jacksonville, Florida gas station and forbidden to return to her Richmond, Virginia apartment. Though newly 18, Emma is still in high school, and after years of surviving a challenging home life, she is suddenly homeless.

One of the most remarkable things about Emma is that she has borne all of this adversity with incredible grace and optimism. To know her is to wonder how such a delightful person could endure so much and turn into such an amazing young lady. Through no fault of her own, she has been denied the stability that so many of us take for granted. That’s why the many people who care about her want to do what we can to help her.

Emma’s heart’s desire is to attend Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she plans to major in Human Development. Her goal is to become an Art Therapist which will allow her to combine her artistic talent with her passion for helping others. She has already received a four-year merit scholarship from Eckerd, making it the most affordable of all the colleges to which she’s been accepted, and she has taken the necessary steps to have herself declared independent by Henrico County and the federal government, thereby increasing the size of grants and loans in her federal financial aid package. Despite this assistance, she will still be $16,000 a year short of the amount needed to cover her tuition and board. Given the sheer number of people who know and love her, we believe that we can come together to bridge that financial gap, asking a lot of people to give a little. All funds raised will go directly to Emma for use on tuition, board, supplies and travel expenses.

If you are not able to participate financially, please consider sharing Emma’s story and forwarding this page to as many people as you can. This is an opportunity to help a young lady who very much needs and deserves our help. She’s a very real person who has overcome some very real challenges.

On behalf of Emma and the many people who care about her, thank you for considering this request.