Valley Community Foundation Gives $2,500 at Grantmaking Event
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
AKRON – Thanks to the decision making of Tippecanoe Valley alumni, five local organizations will have a little more funding for their cause. The “Inaugural Community Grantmaking Event” of the Valley Community Foundation was held at the Akron Community Center Tuesday, in cooperation with the Fulton County Community Foundation. The Valley Community Foundation selected five community- or school-related organizations that needed some funding, according to Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation Superintendent Brett Boggs. After hearing a presentation from each of the organizations last night, the 30-40 Valley alumni present got to decide what share of $2,500 each organization received. Ron Newlin, Tippecanoe Valley Alumni Association, announced Akron Youth League will receive $440; Boomerang Backpacks, $350; Fourth-Grade Pioneer Day & Prill School Visit, $710; Little Free Libraries, $450; and Helping Hands, $450. The goals of the Valley Community Foundation are to re-engage TVSC alumni with their schools and hometowns, and to support education and community development. The alumni includes not only Tippecanoe Valley High School, but also graduates of any school that was incorporated into the TVSC, such as Talma, Burket, Palestine, Mentone or Akron. The Foundation grew out of a vision of Terri Johnson’s and Newlin’s eight years ago. They wanted to find a way to get Valley alumni together like colleges do. With more than 5,000 graduates – and no social media eight years ago – they started with a newsletter. Five years ago, they had a Valley social networking website. They used that to invite alumni back for events. Couple of years ago, the Tippecanoe Valley Distinguished Alumni award was created. It was an opportunity for TVSC alumni who were successful to come back and share their careers with current Valley students. Newlin said they never really asked alumni to give money. However, for the first “Community Grantmaking Event,” they were able to raise the $2,500 for alumni to decide how to give back to the community. Going forward, Newlin said to the alumni, “We want to engage you to help us find the other 4,000 graduates so next year we’re giving away more money with more alumni.” Since they’re doing it under the umbrella of the Northern Indiana Community Foundation, Newlin said all the money donated to the Valley fund will be given 100 percent to the charities chosen each year. Before the alumni decided on how much money each organization received, representatives pitched their causes. Lisa Fear, president of Akron Youth League, said they have a little more than 200 boys and girls involved who want to play ball. “We try to get as many kids involved as we can,” she said. Keeping costs down for kids to join means there’s not a lot of money for fields and equipment, but the League keeps growing. Funding would be used to make the park safer, maintain the field and buy new equipment. Eventually, they would like to add lights and batting cages. Boomerang Backpacks provides snacks for school children over the weekend who otherwise might go hungry. “We’ve heard where kids haven’t had food at home in the last two weeks,” Kirk Doehrmann, TVHS principal, stated. With the free and reduced lunch population at more than 50 percent and growing, he said the problem is getting worse. Valley’s Boomerang Backpack program originated four years ago as a Kosciusko Leadership Academy project. It now takes $10,000 a year for the program to provide a backpack for each kid every week in the program. “Boomerang Backpack benefits our little guys. It just does. It’s neat to see,” he said. High school students help by having fundraisers or packing the backpacks. Warsaw and Wawasee now have Boomerang Backpack programs, and a golf outing has been scheduled for June 17 to raise money for all three programs. The goal is to raise $3,000 to $4,000 for each program. The “Pioneer Day” program was born out of June Yazel’s and Jeff Shriver’s American Studies course. High school students got involved in saving the Prill School, and students decided to bring back Pioneer Day for Valley fourth-graders at Prill like they experienced when they were kids. Students Mitch Randall and Kortney Mayorga explained how retired fourth-grade teachers trained the high school students to teach activities like candle making and butter churning. Students also were instrumental in getting electricity on in the 1800s school and new lights. The funds from the grant, according to Shriver, will be used to continue the Pioneer Days into the future. Helping Hands is a food pantry that serves needy families in the TVSC. Mary and Jerry Sechrist started it 25 years ago. “Everything we do stays in our school district,” Jerry stated. He said they are open every Thursday and serve about 50 families every week. Last year, he said they served 604 different families. Counting those who came more than once, he said they served 2,192 families, and “rounded out” served about 8,000 individuals. While the towns of Mentone and Akron have public libraries, Little Free Libraries helps provide students in the surrounding areas with books. Students may not be able to get to libraries where they live or have transportation. “It provides free access to books wherever kids are,” Kristen Horrell, Little Free Libraries committee member, said. She said they are looking for places to host the Little Libraries, which are being constructed by TVHS students. Viking Foods has the only one so far. Little Free Libraries is a national program that Akron is now a part of. “Obviously,” Horrell said, “we want people to borrow, donate and share (books).” She said the impact of the program is that kids will have books. “There’s no card you have to have, no late fees, no check-in or check-out,” she stated. While they are in the early stages of the program, she said they would like to have six or seven locations for it. Ways people can support it include donating books, materials or money; or provide or monitor a location. In determining how much money each organization received, the alumni were broken up into five tables. Each table had $500 to work with, and each table sponsored a project for $100. With the remaining $400, the alumni at each table got to determine how to split it among all the projects.
