(BPRW) Getty Images Partners with The United Negro College Fund to Create an HBCU Scholarship

(Black PR Wire) Getty Images and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) have announced the creation of the UNCF-Getty Images Scholarship for students at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

The program will provide scholarships to students attending HBCUs across the U.S. and will be funded by revenue created by the inaugural Getty Images Photo Archive Grants for HBCUs, which is working to digitize the visual history of HBCUs.

Launched in partnership with the Getty family and Stand Together, the photo archive program will commit $500,000 toward digitizing HBCU photographic archives. The grant will support the digitization of up to 100,000 photos for two HBCU grant recipients. HBCU schools will retain all copyrights, and the photos will be returned to the HBCUs after scanning.

“We thank Getty Images for its partnership and investment in our students’ futures. The Getty Images Photo Archive Grants for HBCUs exemplifies Getty Images’ commitment to support HBCUs and to give a visual life to previously untold stories,” Dr. Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, UNCFsaid in a release. “There is a wealth of unseen imagery within the archives of HBCUs that have rarely been seen, and these grants from Getty Images will be an essential part of the ongoing documentation and preservation of Black history.”

All revenue from the HBCU photos will be distributed to HBCU schools to continue impacting the grants program. Fifty percent of the funds will go to grant recipients, and 20% will be reinvested to fund the Getty Images Photo Archive Grants. The remaining 30% will be distributed to the UNCF-Getty Images Scholarship to support the educational future of HBCU students.

The scholarships will be available for students in the 2022 academic year. Getty Images Co-Founder and Chairman Mark Getty is excited about the HBCU partnership.

“At Getty Images, we are excited about this partnership with HBCUs to digitize significant parts of their photographic archives,” Getty said in a statement. “A photographic archive tells a story; it’s a visual history of who we are. As a society, we can only learn from history if it tells everyone’s story. This partnership is an important step in that direction.”