AUGUSTA — Paige McNef, Samantha Hamilton and Ethan LeHay weren’t fully aware that they were some of the first babies in Maine to receive a $500 Alfond Grant growing up. But when it came time to think about college, those grants came as a big relief.

McNef, Hamilton and LeHay, who grew up in central Maine, all started their first semesters at college this fall, thanks in part to that early investment in their futures.

“I had no clue how I was going to pay for college,” said LeHay, who now goes to Central Maine Community College in Auburn. “Then my grandmother had told me about the Alfond Grant, and that took a huge weight off my shoulders.”

Now LeHay, who is going to come out of his first year of college debt-free, can focus on enjoying the beginning of his college experience.

The Alfond Grant Program, started by Maine businessman and philanthropist Harold Alfond shortly before he died in 2007, has granted $500 to every child born in Maine since 2013, totaling over 184,000 recipients, to use for education after high school. The program was first launched in 2008 and was awarded to 650 children born in Waterville and Augusta before later becoming available to all Maine children.

At an event celebrating this milestone Tuesday on the University of Maine at Augusta campus, the Alfond Scholarship Foundation announced new partnerships with the University of Maine system and Thomas College, which will now offer additional scholarships to eligible Alfond Grant recipients who attend those schools. The scholarships include $250 from the University of Maine system and $500 from Thomas College in Waterville.

“It is our way of saying, ‘Hey, this is one heck of an idea. It is blooming, and we want to make it bloom even bigger,'” Dannel P. Malloy, chancellor of the University of Maine System, said. “And we want to be a part of the effort to make sure that more families, at the birth of a child, are participating in this investment, not just investments in money, investment in the child.”

Eighteen years after the first 650 children received those $500 grants, the value of the grants now total around $2,500 or more depending on additional parental contributions.

The Alfond Scholarship Foundation invests the funds until a child is ready to use them, allowing them to grow over time. Families are also encouraged to open a NextGen 529 account, a state-sponsored investment account for higher education, alongside the grant to add their own contributions and receive matching grants from the Finance Authority of Maine, allowing the accounts to grow even more.

“It (has) that practical benefit of being real money in a real account,” Colleen Quint, president and CEO of the Alfond Scholarship Foundation, said. “It has that aspirational benefit of not just kind of encouraging kids to think about their futures, but also, and we hear this a lot from kids and from parents, is that someone else believes in my child, someone sees my child as having value. And that’s a really powerful thing.”

Early investments in education often have a positive impact on children’s aspirations, development and outcomes in school, Quint said, as well as increasing parents’ aspirations for their children’s futures.

The grant can be used for a wide array of higher education opportunities like college, vocational school, certificate programs, apprenticeships or graduate school and is not limited just to institutions in Maine.

“That’s money all to power the higher education opportunities for Maine kids, and then for those Maine kids to have a better life because of it,” Greg Powell, CEO and president of the Harold Alfond Foundation, said. “I like to think the state is better off too, because it’s really allowed our workforce now to have a leg up, and we will see that in the years ahead.”

Hamilton is using her grant to study civil engineering at University of Maine in Orono, McNef is studying radiology at Kennebec Valley Community College and LeHay is pursuing accounting at Central Maine Community College.

When asked what they would tell younger students preparing for their futures, all three grant recipients said to dream big and invest early.

“Just taking it day by day, going, ‘What can I do today to make my future better?'” Hamilton advised younger students. “And I think the Alfond Grant is incredible in that financially.”