GREENSBORO, NC/ February 2012—The NBCC Foundation recently selected 10 recipients for its military and rural scholarships. Recipients will be awarded scholarships of $3,000 to support their counseling education and to recognize their commitment to providing counseling services to underserved populations.

The goal of the scholarships is to increase the number of counselors in the areas where they are needed most. After two successful years of this program, the NBCC Foundation Board of Trustees was excited to embark on this next edition of scholarships. Nearly 100 dedicated counseling students throughout the country applied for the five military and five rural scholarships, and the Board of Trustees was impressed with the high caliber of these applicants.

The rural scholarship was established to create more counseling services for rural communities, which suffer disproportionately from a lack of mental health services. The rural scholarship recipients are committed to meeting this need in their hometown or other rural area. They plan to develop counseling resources in these communities by focusing on community-specific issues, such as obesity, bullying, alcoholism and poverty in their own practice or existing mental health centers.

The military scholarship was created to increase the number of counselors available to serve military personnel and veterans. The recipients of this scholarship represent four of the five branches of military service and are dedicated to helping their fellow men and women in uniform. They will put their own military experience to work as they help clients cope with the many challenges of military life, including deployment, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), readjustment and transition to civilian life.

The NBCC Foundation plans to continue offering scholarships to increase access to counseling services. For more information or to make a gift in support of the Foundation’s mission, please visit www.nbccf.org.

The NBCC Foundation is an affiliate of the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), based in Greensboro, NC. NBCC is the nation’s premier professional certification board devoted to credentialing counselors who meet standards for the general and specialty practices of professional counseling. Currently, there are more than 48,000 National Certified Counselors in the United States and more than 50 countries.