I’m the director of the Fountain Hills Cinderella Scholarship Foundation. We are a youth development program, encouraging young girls through performing arts, community service and a guiding positive atmosphere.

Local businesses become deluged with donation requests. And for my first time, I walked through each door, requesting the same. As I looked into the eyes of “not again,” each and every one of these merchants held an incredible standard of polite professionalism. They listened intently as I presented the idea for the “coupon book.” Each accepted me with a warm welcome and gladly participated, demonstrating tremendous support of our youths!

We prepared a slightly different approach. We didn’t want a handout from business owners. Our goal is to create an opportunity to stimulate the local economy while the Fountain Hills Royalty raise money for their cause.

The “Coupon Book” is a listing of 32 merchants. Each merchant offers some form of discount, anything from buy one get one free, 10, 20 even 25 percent off and some items are free! Locals can purchase this coupon book for only $10.

The book offers over $1000 worth of savings from merchants.

You can purchase this book from any Cinderella girl, or the High School Booster Club or its athletes and online at www.fhcinderella.com.

I want to give a special thanks to Sami’s, All- American Grill, Phil’s Filling Station, Fountini’s, Senor Taco, McDonald’s, Snap Fitness, Sunset Cleaners, Sofrita, Redondo’s, Skin Apeel, Cheryl’s, DJ’s Bagels, Mayor Linda, Starbucks, The Flower Shoppe, Fountain Hills Times, Let’s Go, Subway, Streets of NY, Saddle Bronc Grill, Nonny’s and Wired-Up.

An outstanding performance from every local business owner, your effort and dedication to our youths demonstrated to our royalty an overwhelming sense of community support. You have modeled and delivered excellence.