When businesses choose to support education through partnerships with local schools, everyone benefits. Schools get access to money and real-world expertise that they would not otherwise have, students get a chance to interact with people they would do well to emulate and businesses get access to their next generation of employees, along with a chance to help mold those young minds.

There’s also, of course an element of satisfaction that comes simply from the knowledge that your contribution has helped in some way, that, perhaps, some young mind has been exposed to concepts that previously had been hidden, that maybe a seed has been planted that will one day bear special fruit.

Probably some combination of all of those factors was at work when a variety of businesses and government agencies contributed cash recently to the Nansemond River High School robotics program.

The team has received donations from BASF Corp., Adaptive Aerospace, the New Horizons Education Center, J.C. Penney, BAE Systems and NASA. Those donations, among other things, will help fund the team’s entry fee and other costs for a regional competition at Virginia Commonwealth University.

If last school year — the team’s first in competition — can be used as a guide, the students could then wind up at the 2011 FIRST Robotics World Championship once again.

Clearly, the investment that these organizations have made could go a long way. But the students whose minds are being exercised and whose lives are being enriched by the generosity of companies and organizations that have given in spite of economic hardship can go even further. What a generous investment.