$125,000 to Pay off Student Loan Dept Sounds Dope

If you’ve never heard of it before, the Scholly app is doing something innovative and serving a need that plagues current and past students from all walks of life. Scholly, and its founder Christopher Gray, are on a mission to help students headed to college, and seeking financial aid, have access to thousands of scholarships. Scholly is now expanding their mission to help students fight college debt. They’ve teamed up with Freeform, the TV network responsible for the show “Grown-ish”, to help students pay off their college debt.

Scholly and “Grown-ish” are running a competition to fund grants of up to $125,000 to help students pay off their outstanding loans. If you want to apply, the contest will have two phases. In the first phase, the applicant will visit myscholly.com/grownish (or the Scholly app), enter your name, loan amount, and school. In the second phase, it will require a formal application, along with an essay, and some other specific requirements.

Although the show “Grown-ish” has been experiencing some online controversy, due to complaints about the issues of colorism, and how there are no darker-complexion women represented on the show. The show and its actors have vehemently denied any issues of colorism. Freelance writer, @WannasWorld on Twitter, first addressed the problematic issues with the show here on her blog.

Christopher Gray stated that the focus on student loans is a universal problem. Gray knows all too well about the struggles of paying for college. As the son of a single mother, like so many others, Gray couldn’t afford to pay for college. He decided to go out on his own and research private scholarship opportunities. His research paid off, and Gray was awarded over $1 million in grants. While at Drexel University, he decided to use his experience to build a company that could help other students.

Since the announcement of the Scholly/Grown-ish collaboration, interest in the Scholly app has increased exponentially, traffic on the app has shot up, Scholly now has about 3 million users, and has garnered about $100 million in scholarship funding.