When it neared time for the Tipp City Foundation to award its milestone $3 millionth discretionary grant dollar, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Author Series was a natural choice.

The author series, established in 2019, may be one of the foundation’s newer projects, but it is also one its board has seen have a dramatic impact on the community. The foundation itself had been making grants since 1943.

Tipp City’s Helen Pritchard drew the public library into the Peace Prize author series, and it has been involved since, said Lisa Santucci, the library’s executive director. The library, in turn, reached out to the Tipp City schools to collaborate.

The program was highly visible again this year with a day of activities that included students, staff, and the community at Tippecanoe High School. Featured was Alexander Starritt, author of the highly recognized We Germans.

Activities also included a podcast with WYSO Youth Radio, which required extensive planning, including training, transportation issues, lunch and catering, and getting books for all the students. Santucci, who previously worked as an academic librarian at Miami (Ohio) University, said she had the opportunity to see students interact with authors and see how that experience could change them.

“I wanted this to happen in this town, for our school district, especially since it's happening right down in Dayton,” Santucci said of the Peace Prize program.

Brenda Mahaney, Tippecanoe High School English teacher, said students' preparation can be extensive, with reading and discussing the texts, literary analysis studies of characters and characterization, and analysis of the author's narrative techniques. This year, about 230 students and teachers from the history and English departments were involved in the project.

The program is funded by grants from several sources, including the Tipp City Foundation, which provided $6,500.

The community is fortunate to have this program for its students, Mahaney said.

“Living in a small town is a beautiful thing, but it does have its limitations, especially when it comes to developing a robust and multi-faceted view of the world.  People say that books can be mirrors or windows, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize always provides our students the opportunity to look out of a window they might have never previously considered,” she said.

"Our students must be equipped to leave this town and prepared for a world that doesn't look or think like them and with very different experiences.  These texts and experiences help prepare them to be the leaders and forward thinkers that our world needs,” she said.