The Jackson EMC Foundation board of directors awarded $122,618 in grants during its June meeting, including $71,618 to organizations serving Hall County.
*$15,000 to the Potter’s House, an Atlanta Mission facility, to help feed, house, counsel and provide educational programs, such as adult literacy, to men who are recovering from substance abuse through an intensive residential program at this 570-acre working farm in Jefferson.
*$15,000 to Auditory Verbal Center for a therapist, clinical supplies, and equipment maintenance, repair and calibration, used to help children under the age of five in the counties served by Jackson EMC who have cochlear implants overcome their hearing loss and learn to communicate without the use of sign language.
*$15,000 to L.A.M.P. Ministries in Gainesville for its Community Youth and Children’s program, three-month sessions open to young people ages 7-17, which combines group counseling and community activities to provide high risk youths in Gwinnett, Hall, Jackson and Lumpkin counties with a positive alternative to gangs, drugs and other delinquent behavior.
*$13,000 to Georgia Mountain Food Bank in Hall County to assist with the purchase of a vehicle for the Neighborhood Grocery Delivery Program, which coordinates with community agencies to identify people in their communities who are unable to come to the Mobile Food Pantry due to limited transportation, age, disability, serious illness or extreme poverty, to distribute food in areas of most defined need.
*$8,000 to Our Neighbor, a Gainesville grassroots non-profit organization dedicated to assisting young adults with special challenges, to assist with home upgrades to make wheelchair accessible, to provide occupational, physical, speech and communication therapy for residents.
*$5,618 to Family Promise of Hall County, a community effort to end the cycle of family homelessness, to purchase equipment for the Day Center, one Next Step Program Home, which allows program graduate families to live in safe, affordable housing temporarily, and the Little Steps Day Care, which provides free, temporary child care option while parents search for employment.
Click here to see a list of all the agencies in the Jackson EMC service area that were awarded grants at the June board meeting.
Jackson EMC Foundation grants are made possible by the more than 185,200 participating cooperative members who have their monthly electric bills rounded to the next dollar amount through the Operation Round Up program. Their “spare change” has funded 1,208 grants to organizations and 345 grants to individuals, putting more than $12.2 million back into local communities since the program began in 2005.
Any individual or charitable organization in the ten counties served by Jackson EMC (Clarke, Banks, Barrow, Franklin, Gwinnett, Hall, Jackson, Lumpkin, Madison and Oglethorpe) may apply for a Foundation grant by completing an application, available online at http://www.jacksonemc.com/foundation-guidelines or at local Jackson EMC offices. Applicants do not need to be a member of Jackson EMC.
