Byron Ness, President of the Garden Valley Technology Board of Directors, presents Olivia Forgit with a $2,000 MTA Scholarship during the awards banquet.

The Minnesota Telecom Alliance announced that they received 103 scholarship applications from across the state and one winning student is from Fertile. Olivia Forgit was selected to receive a $2,000 scholarship for the 2022-2023 academic year from the Minnesota Telecom Alliance Foundation, according to Tim Brinkman, Garden Valley Technologies.

Ms. Forgit will be graduating from Fertile-Beltrami High School and plans to attend the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is the daughter of Matthew Forgit.

In awarding the scholarship to Ms. Forgit, Tim Brinkman said, “We are happy to have this chance to make an investment in this students’ college education. Rural communities need educated and talented young people to be our leaders of the future. It makes us all proud at Garden Valley Technologies when one of the statewide winners is from our area.”

The Foundation is part of the Minnesota Telecom Alliance, a trade organization based in St. Paul representing over forty-four telephone companies and cooperatives in the state. To be eligible for this scholarship, applicants must be attending post-secondary education at either a university, college, or technical college, be a Minnesota resident, and the applicant’s family must subscribe to at least one service from a MTA member company; in this case, Garden Valley Technologies. The panel reviewed each application and scored the applications based on the applicants’ grades, academic achievements and extra-curricular activities.

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