Gargiulo Education Center Receives Historic Grant

The work of Gargiulo Education Center will be greatly enhanced by an anonymous donation of $886,220, the largest private grant in the organization’s history.  

The GEC provides academic and developmental support to students in North Naples from kindergarten through high school, with a strong focus on grades K–7. Services include an after-school tutoring program that provides personalized instruction in math, reading, and speech therapy, helping students build core skills, close learning gaps, and gain confidence. 

For older students, there’s the Teen Empowerment and Career Pathways Program, which offers high school students hands-on training in career readiness, entrepreneurship, paid internships, and mentorship, helping prepare them to enter the workforce with practical skills and a strong sense of direction. 

The donor is a former educator who was inspired by the center’s mission and its impact on children and families in need. Her gift will enable the GEC to expand its reach in the community and support the nonprofit’s core academic programming, while further developing its high school mentorship and family resource services. 

A donation of this size is transformative, in the eyes of Marie Capita, the organization’s interim executive director.  

“It means a lot becausein the nonprofit world, if you're a smaller organization, you really do not have that much recognition in the community where peopleknow about you and whereby donors can make donations,” she added. “It's usually the big, bigger organizations in town that donorsknow about because they have more marketing money to be more visible. However, this grant means that someone noticed us.” 

Kim Koehl, the GEC’s board president, agreed.  

“This extraordinary act of generosity affirms the heart of our mission and strengthens our ability to serve more students and families,” she said.  

Capita said that like much of Collier County, the North Naples area’s relative affluence masks pockets of poverty among the working poor and other less fortunate residents that may not be apparent to many people.  

“This means that now we can continue with the speech therapist that we provide to students in the center and continue with the mental health that we provide to them and continue with the food that we provide to them, because a lot of them are latchkey kids,” she said of the donation. “When they go home, their parents are not there yet, so the food we give them after school is their dinner, technically. This means we can continue hiring teachers to work with them as after-school tutors and reaching out to the schools for connection to help them with theirlearning IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) and so forth. This means that we can continue with the help that we are currently providing, that we were struggling with because of a lack of funding.” 

The GEC serves 37 students from pre-K through 12th grade, including the families of enrolled children who have younger siblings.  

“We help them with getting them ready for school, through testing,” said Capita. “We help them with food assistance. And for example, the holidays are coming up and a lot of them don't have the money to buy gifts and so forth. So, we have our volunteers and donors help us to provide that to them. So, in between the 37 that we actually serve at the center, we have an additional 36-plus of siblings that we also help their parents with.” 

The GEC is located in North Naples. Capita said it’s the only organization in that area that provides such services for youths and their families.  

For more information about the Gargiulo Education Center or to support its growing programs, visit www.gargiuloed.org.