The Vydunas Youth Fund

The Vydunas Youth Fund was established in 1952 to provide support to emigrant lithuanian students, who were members of the Lithuanian Scouts Association’s Academic Scouts division (skautai akademikai).   The original mission of the Fund was eventually expanded to include support for lithuanian educational and cultural publications and journals.   With the advent of Lithuania’s freedom in 1990 from the former Soviet Union, the Fund’s goals were once again expanded to include scholarships to lithuanian academic scouts studying at various Lithuanian universities.   In recent years, generous donors have established specific funds within the Vydunas Youth Fund to provide annual scholarships and contest awards to encourage Lithuanian students to excel both within and outside of Lithuania.   The Fund is governed by a board of directors, with day-to-day operations left to the executive committee.

Even though the Vydunas Youth Fund is dedicated to the support of Lithuanian students within our scouting organizations, we realize that many non-lithuanian-speaking individuals are interested in the Fund and support our cultural and educational efforts.   Therefore, we are mirroring our lithuanian language website pages with this section, which is written in english.

Here you will find various information about the Vydunas Youth Fund, its origins and mission, and the scholarships, publications, fund-raisers and contests that the fund has supported and funded throughout the years.

We encourage everyone to familiarize themselves with our al,ost 60-year history of achievements and encourage you to support our efforts with your tax-exempt donations.   Each donation helps the Fund continue efforts to keep the Lithuanian language and culture alive amongst the youth of the Lithuanian Scouts Association as well as to support the  intellectual development of our students – here in the US, Canada, England and Australia – as well as in recently independent Lithuania.

We also welcome major contributions and memorial donations toward the establishment of specific scholarship funds within the Vydunas Youth Fund.   Annual dividends are used to grant these scholarship awards based on the donor’s wishes.

The Vydunas Youth Fund office is located at the Lithuanian World Center in Lemont Illinois.

Vydunas Youth Fund

14911 E. 127th st.

Lemont, IL 60439