Mentor Schools Foundation - The 2025 Subaru Share the Love Event Hometown Charity

Our Partnership

Adventure Subaru has chosen the Mentor Schools Foundation as our 2025 Subaru Share the Love Event Hometown Charity. Through annual fundraising efforts and community partnerships, MSF provides financial resources for innovative learning opportunities beyond the classroom - supporting teachers at all grade levels with grants that make possible equipment purchases, field trips, and programs not otherwise available in the district budget.

When you purchase or lease a new Subaru from Adventure during the Share the Love Event, you can choose the Mentor Schools Foundation to receive a donation. Those contributions fund the construction tools students use to build actual projects, the sensory equipment that helps students regulate when they need it, the transportation that gets teams to state competitions, and the technology that turns engineering concepts into objects students can test and refine.

You can learn more about how the Mentor Schools Foundation has supported these programs in the stories below.

Adventure Subaru and the Mentor Schools Foundation. Serving the community where our students learn, live, and grow.

Fresh Air Challenge

One of Mentor Schools Foundation's fan favorite fundraisers is their annual Fresh Air Challenge which Adventure Subaru has sponsored for multiple years.

During the Fresh Air Challenge last fall, students logged over 1500 hours of open-air activity and received an array of prizes to continue enjoying the great outdoors. As a result of the community and sponsors' generosity, kids spent more time outside and over $5,000 was raised for the foundation.

Lake School Store - Lake Elementary

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $4,608.91 to fund a heat press and materials for a student-run school store at Lake Elementary. Students design Lake House merchandise, set prices, press the shirts, and run sales three days a week. When a design doesn't sell, that inventory sits there until they markdown or redesign. When they price too high, students don't buy. When they spend the budget on slow-moving items, they can't order what people actually want.

Every quarter, the students running the store analyze what moved and what didn't, then write a newsletter explaining their changes. Two hundred seventy students cycle through operations during the year, each encountering the same constraints: limited budget, real customers, actual inventory taking up space. After initial funding, the store supports itself - proceeds buy new inventory or they run out of products to sell.

Tools for Toolbox Project - Memorial Tech Ed

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $7,040 to give 240 students their own set of basic construction tools: a hammer, try square, tape measure, and level. Students learned how each tool works by building something they'd actually use - a toolbox to keep them in. The project ran through both semesters, with students measuring, cutting, squaring corners, and assembling their boxes from raw materials. Each one walked out with what they built and the tools to use it.

Sensory Room Upgrade - Bellflower Elementary Special Education

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $1,000 to create a dedicated sensory room at Bellflower Elementary for special education students. The space gives students options when they need them: a rowing machine or stationary bike when movement helps, textured boards and busy boxes for hands that process through touch, an electronic drum set, and a hanging egg chair tucked away for students who need quiet.

What students need shifts day to day, sometimes hour to hour. One student might work through frustration by rowing, another finds focus at the drum set, another regulates by retreating to the hanging chair. The room recognizes that some students need different environments at different times to learn effectively, and provides those environments in one accessible space.

Science Olympiad Transportation - Shore and Memorial Middle Schools

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $4,000 to cover transportation costs for 43 students from Shore and Memorial Middle Schools to attend the State Science Olympiad competition at Ohio State University in Columbus. Students from both schools compete in STEM events across categories like physics, chemistry, earth science, and engineering. Shore and Memorial practice together in shared classroom sessions throughout the year - eighth graders from both buildings working through trial events, building projects, and preparing for competitions.

For many of these students, Science Olympiad provides one of the few opportunities to represent their school on a competitive team. The program runs through three levels: invitational meets, regional competition, and state competition. Students who qualify advance through each level, with Shore and Memorial teams regularly placing at state competitions both as teams and through individual event performances.

The skills students develop in project management, time collaboration, and study habits carry forward when they continue competing at Mentor High School.

StoryWalk - Mentor Schools

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $1,536 to replace paper backgrounds with plastic ones across eight StoryWalk locations in Mentor elementary schools. StoryWalks put story pages on posts along outdoor paths where kids read while they walk. Students in grades K-5 follow the route, reading the next page of a story at each station, moving between reading and walking until the story ends.

When paper backgrounds deteriorated in rain or snow, those walks closed until someone could replace them - taking away outdoor reading time when weather was good enough to use them. Plastic backgrounds handle Northeast Ohio weather without failing, keeping all eight locations open year-round.

Model UN

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $9,000 to send nine students to the National High School Model UN Conference in Manhattan. Students participate in hands-on simulation of United Nations procedures, international relations, and world diplomacy. Last year, in their first appearance at this conference, the school delegation won an award and two delegates earned individual honors.

3D Printing for STEAM Curriculum - All Elementary Schools

Mentor Schools Foundation granted funds for 3D printers to integrate engineering design into elementary STEAM classes. Students use TinkerCAD design software to create digital models, then print physical prototypes to test whether their designs work. The process follows the engineering design cycle taught in STEAM curriculum: design something, test it, identify what fails, refine the design, test again.

Starting with one intermediate grade level during the 2025-2026 school year, students work through grade-appropriate design challenges that require spatial reasoning and problem-solving. A student designs an object on screen, watches it print layer by layer, then holds the physical result and evaluates whether it matches their intent. When it doesn't work as planned, they return to the design software and adjust. The technology turns abstract engineering concepts into something students can manipulate with their hands.

Rehearsal Mirrors - Top 25 Show Choir at Mentor High School

Mentor Schools Foundation granted $2,000 toward portable rehearsal mirrors for Top 25 Show Choir at Mentor High School. Show choir combines vocals with synchronized choreography - 28 students singing while executing the same movements at the same time. Without mirrors, students rely on instructor corrections to know when their arms are at different angles or their spacing is off. With mirrors, they watch themselves and each other during rehearsal, catching misalignments immediately. A student sees their arm position differs from the person next to them and adjusts without waiting for the director to spot it.

The group lost their previous rehearsal space that had wall-mounted mirrors when the room was repurposed. The portable mirrors can be moved into and out of the shared Fine Arts Center space they now use during designated rehearsal times. Precision matters in competitive show choir evaluation - judges score visual synchronization alongside vocal performance. The mirrors let students self-correct posture, spacing, and timing throughout rehearsal rather than discovering problems at competition.

The Subaru VIP Educator Program

At Adventure Subaru, we are proud to welcome those who nurture and educate students in our community to the Subaru VIP Educator Program.

From August 1, 2025 through January 2, 2026 active employees of PreK-12 schools may be eligible to receive $500 off the purchase or lease of a new Subaru.

Learn more about the program in our blog post and check your eligibility here!