In the midst of the Depression in 1936, Julia Brunelli met with a small group of other Italian-American women in her home in Greensburg's Hilltop neighborhood to devise a plan to help young girls of Italian descent go to college.

If there was any money to send a family member to college, “the money went to the male child,” said Jonie Daigle, a member of the Greensburg Club of Italian Women. Brunelli, the first Italian-American woman hired as a teacher at Greensburg High School, wanted to change that practice by giving local girls of Italian descent a scholarship, said her friend, Mary Pedrazzoli, 82, of Greensburg.