Violini Scholarship Fund

In Memorial of Iolanda Violini

May 7, 1931- December 18, 2021

 This scholarship is offered through The Salvation Army Illuminate to support education related expenses for self-identified women who have lived experience of poverty, abusive relationships, exploitation, human trafficking, single motherhood, and/or limited access to education.

 Iolanda Violini was an Italian immigrant from Urbania, Italy. She is known to her family as a loving, hardworking matriarch who was generous and showed great determination. Growing up impoverished in Italy, she worked on a farm from a young age. In grade 2, she was pulled from school permanently to tend to the pigs, solely because she was a female. While her brothers continued to attend school, that was the last level of schooling she would complete. 

 She immigrated to Canada in 1950 to pursue a better life, and faced many hardships. She could not speak the language, was in an unhappy marriage and soon after became a single mom. She did not understand the culture, yet day by day she persevered to learn what was needed to make it in Canada. She found a job at a dry cleaner, and she ended up managing a high-end dry-cleaning store up to retirement. 

 She had a passion for life, faith, philanthropy, the ocean, hiking mountains, and food. Iolanda is survived by three daughters and six grandchildren in Canada, to whom she always had arms open for hugs, ears to listen, a spare bed, and a hot meal for whoever needed it. She always desired to be educated, and watched two of her grandchildren graduate with Master’s Degrees thanks to years of her hardwork and sacrifice. This scholarship honors the life of Iolanda Violini, and invests in others the education she so deeply wanted, who may face disadvantages such as she did. This scholarship is managed by The Maxwell Consulting Group.