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Jackson EMC Foundation awards $52K to agencies serving area residents
1027COMMUNITY
Jackson EMC District Manager Bill Sanders, far left, and Jackson EMC Foundation board member Phillippa Lewis Moss, far right, present a $15,000 Foundation grant check to Center Point Georgia Executive Director David Smith, director of program development Barbara Hicks and board Chairman Brad Patten. The funds will be used to provide in-school therapeutic counseling and the Smart Girls program in Gainesville and Hall County schools.

The Jackson EMC Foundation board of directors awarded a total $105,500 in grants during its August meeting, including $52,500 to agencies serving Hall County residents.

• $15,000 to Center Point Georgia to provide in-school therapeutic counseling to school-age children and their families through its Wilheit Services, and to offer the Smart Girls program that builds character skills to help girls make healthy choices to students in Gainesville and Hall County schools.

• $15,000 to Challenged Child and Friends, a Gainesville nonprofit organization providing educational, therapeutic, nursing and family support services to children with disabilities in all counties served by Jackson EMC, to support the Early Intervention Program that provides special needs children with classroom instruction, individualized therapy and nursing services.

• $10,000 to The Salvation Army-Gainesville, which serves Banks, Barrow, Hall and Jackson counties, for emergency shelter operations and to provide food to shelter residents and those in the community who are hungry and seek a meal at the nightly free dinner. The Gainesville agency provided 5,338 individuals with emergency shelter and served 7,567 meals last year.

• $7,500 to Habitat for Humanity of Hall County for heating, ventilation and air conditioning; electrical; roofing and flooring for a home being built under the Women Build program in Copper Glen, the first Habitat Hall subdivision, for a single mother and her two children who lost their home to a fire that severely burned her daughter.

• $5,000 to Penfield Christian Homes, a Georgia nonprofit Christian ministry that provides substance abuse treatment for women and men so that they may return to their families, jobs, churches and communities as productive citizens, to help fund treatment for individuals with no financial resources in all counties served by Jackson EMC.

Jackson EMC Foundation grants are made possible by the more than 182,800 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 1,116 grants to organizations and 336 grants to individuals, putting more than $11.3 million back into local communities since the program began in 2005.

Any individual or charitable organization in the 10 counties served by Jackson EMC (Hall, Lumpkin, Banks, Gwinnett, Clarke, Barrow, Franklin, Jackson, 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.