The Jackson EMC Foundation board of directors awarded a total $95,075 in grants to organizations during its July meeting, including $52,300 to organizations serving Hall County.
*$15,000 to the American Red Cross of Northeast Georgia to provide disaster relief, including food, shelter, personal needs and clothing, to families in Banks, Barrow, Clarke, Franklin, Hall, Jackson, Lumpkin, Madison and Oglethorpe counties who have lost their home to a fire or natural disaster.
*$15,000 to Children’s Center for Hope & Healing in Gainesville to provide 36 children who have been sexually abused with therapy to reduce trauma symptoms such as nightmares, bed wetting, anxiousness, depression, anger, fatigue and self-hatred, and for their families to decrease the sense of isolation, strengthen the family, assist with parent-child attachment and family functioning.
*$14,800 to Boys & Girls Clubs of Lanier (formerly the Boys & Girls Clubs of Hall County) for its Triple Play program, which will help 1,300 youth during a 48-week period to increase their knowledge of healthy habits, good nutrition and physical fitness with the primary goal to reduce childhood obesity.
*$7,500 to CHRIS 180 (Creativity, Honor, Respect, Integrity and Safety) Gwinnett Counseling Center, which serves Banks, Gwinnett and Hall counties with a mission to heal children, strengthen families and build community, to support mental health services and trauma counseling for uninsured and underinsured clients at the Lawrenceville location in an effort to end the intergenerational cycles of poverty and abuse.
Jackson EMC Foundation grants are made possible by the more than 185,409 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 1,215 grants to organizations and 346 grants to individuals, putting more than $12.3 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.
