What We Do

In 2020, we had the shock of our lives when Franky was diagnosed with cancer. When we lost her, we developed Franky’s Fund to support her dreams for her students.

Our Mission

The single goal of Franky’s Fund is to reward graduating high school seniors who are single mothers, who were placed in special English-study programs because English was not their first language, with a financial gift to reward them and empower their educational goals for higher education.

We seek to reward the young women Francesca would have taught.

• They are students graduating from high school who plan to attain higher education.

• They learned how to read, write, and speak English because when they arrived in the United States, they did not know how to communicate in English.

• They are single mothers.

“We have worked to officially make one of our graduation awards in excellence in ESL teaching, now named in honor of Francesca. She actually won this award herself and so it's so special to be able to do this, in perpetuity...”

— Dr. Laura Baecher. Associate Professor | Department of Curriculum & Teaching | School of Education
Programs in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Hunter College of the City University of New York.

What We’ve Achieved