Englewood Education Foundation plans to include a 20th anniversary celebration as part of this year’s Nov. 7 fall fling.

“The Fall Fling is our major annual fundraising event,” said Mary Dounay, EEF president. “The proceeds from last year’s Fall Fling went a long way toward helping us fund two major projects. The projects included awarding about $12,000 in scholarships to 2008 graduates of Englewood High School and Colorado’s Finest Alternative High School, plus this fall we were able to provide more than $25,000 in creativity grants to teachers in our schools.”

This year’s event begins at 6 p.m. Nov. 7 and it will be held in the community room on the second floor of the Englewood Civic Center, 1000 Englewood Parkway.

A ticket to Englewood Education Foundation’s Fall Fling provides admission to the event that features food, live music by professional performer Brian Leonard, an Englewood High School graduate, a silent auction and a live auction.

A variety of items have been donated for the auctions, including a baseball signed by Colorado Rockies player Troy Tulowitzki and one signed by Garrett Action as well as wine gift sets. Again this year, items expected to receive a lot of silent auction attention are the art chairs.

Each child-size chair is an original, created by the artist for the auction. Those creating chairs include artists, teachers and community business leaders.

Tickets are $50 per person. For information on the event or to buy tickets, call 303-761-4021.

The Fall Fling was to be a one-time event a few years ago but, in 2002, the event is held annually as the major EEF fundraiser

In 1989, school administration Larry Nisbet met with a group of supporters to help the schools and the result was establishment of the Englewood Education Foundation.

He explained the foundation was created to set up the organization and the process needed to raise donations of money and materials to support school programs not funded through the district budget.”

The initial foundation project was awarding creativity grants which provide full or partial funding for projects that aren’t budget items. A few years later, the scholarships were added but a lot of focus remained on the creativity grants.

The creativity grant program begins when the call goes out for applications. Teachers, either alone or as a team, prepare their requests or submit them to the foundation.

This year, the foundation was able to fund about $25,000 in creativity grants. Projects funded included establishing a model rocket club for middle and high school students, building a greenhouse for use in studying biology and programs to help students new to the language improve their fluency in English.

One of the projects selected for continued funding this year is the elementary school program offering after school violin and cello lessons called Strings Attached.

Strings Attached was established as a pilot program at the beginning of the 2002-03 school year and marked the first time in about two decades Englewood elementary school students have had the opportunity to take beginning music lessons through the once-a-week, after school program.