As our community continues to face a tight economy and shrinking budgets, the Daily Record has established this feature that each week reports the efforts of local nonprofit organizations and the individuals and businesses that support them.
Bailey Publishing & Communications invites all members of the local nonprofit community to email news, announcements and success stories to: [email protected].
We also encourage our readers to become more aware of the needs of these worthy organizations as they continue to provide valuable services with reduced resources.
Memorial Day donation from veterans
Retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Victor Guillory, who leads the City’s Military Affairs, Veterans and Disabled Services Division, and Division Manager Harrison Conyers took a guided tour Thursday of the Allied Veterans Center at 40 Acme St.
Allied Veterans Center opened in December and is dedicated to meeting the physical and emotional needs of homeless veterans in Northeast Florida. The veterans are offered the opportunity to achieve self-sufficiency and an improved quality of life.
Housing support services, employment assistance and training and health and wellness services have changed the lives of the veterans who are living at the center. To date, the center has had a 100 percent success rate for assisting the live-in veterans who are eligible for employment find full-time jobs.
Staff at Allied Veterans Center presented the City a $5,000 check to use toward Jacksonville’s Memorial Day celebration.
Cohort project to benefit Head Start center
HandsOn Jacksonville’s 2012 Blueprint for Leadership Cohort has selected Episcopal Children’s Services’ Belmont Head Start Center for support through its community action project.
Blueprint for Leadership is a six-month program hosted by HandsOn Jacksonville that trains professionals, leaders and volunteers to serve as effective members of nonprofit boards of directors.
The cohort researches, selects, plans and implements a one-day service project to enhance community involvement and positively impact a nonprofit organization in Northeast Florida.
Belmont is the largest Head Start Center managed and funded by Episcopal Children’s Services. The center serves 80 children and is located in Orange Park, an area of Northeast Florida no previous cohort has selected to impact.
For its day of action on June 6, the cohort will make improvements to the center. The volunteers will plant three raised-bed gardens, complete with the installation of irrigation systems.
“Physical activity tending to the garden, learning how and why things grow and seeing where fresh food comes will play a huge role in educating these children on health and wellness,” said Maria O’Donnell, center director.
The group also will improve usability and organization of classroom materials by installing a new storage system in the classroom.
The cohort wants to raise $5,000 before June 6. Monetary donations will be used to purchase supplies and an in-kind wish list is available upon request. To donate, make a check to HandsOn Jacksonville Inc. with Blueprint written in the memo line.
Checks may be mailed to cohort member and fundraising chair Michael Fox Orr, at Dawson Orr, 233 E. Bay St., Suite 1010, Jacksonville, 32202.
For more information, visit handsonjacksonville.org.
‘Foodfight’ June 7 at EverBank Field
The 22nd Annual “Jacksonville Foodfight” is planned for June 7 at the Touchdown Club East at EverBank Field.
This year’s event will bring together more than 60 area restaurants, caterers and beverage wholesalers for a friendly competition.
The event has raised more than $1 million to help fight hunger in Jacksonville in the past 20 years and organizers hope to raise at least $100,000 this year, with proceeds benefiting the Second Harvest North Florida food bank.
Tickets are $60 for general admission and $100 for VIP access, both of which include samples of dishes prepared by some of the top restaurant chefs in the city, along with beverages and live entertainment.
The VIP admission entitles guests to exclusive access to the Jaguar Suite level, which will feature an additional 20 restaurants and vendors.
VIP status includes access to all restaurants on the second level from 6-6:30 p.m., a private seating area available throughout the event, entry into a prize drawing for a variety of special items and a commemorative wine glass.
A raffle will feature the winner’s choice of one of two prizes: a new 2012 Yamaha V Star 950, provided in part by Beach Boulevard Motorsports, or $5,000 cash. Tickets for the raffle are $100, and only 300 tickets will be sold.
Demand for resources from Second Harvest increased by more than 150 percent in the past three years. The food bank is moving more than 2 million pounds of food per month through its warehouse on Jessie Street, the equivalent of nearly 1.7 million meals for people in need.
“People are reaching out for help. We are answering the call for many of those individuals and families, but it is a challenge that grows each day,” said Second Harvest North Florida Executive Director Bruce Ganger.
“There are people in our community who are hurting and our role is to make sure they have the food resources they need to get back on their feet and move past these hard times. Events like the Jacksonville Foodfight are critical in helping us to accomplish this work,” he said.
Food distribution at Second Harvest has risen steadily in recent years, from 6.62 million pounds in 2007 to 20.1 million in 2011. Ganger said projections show Second Harvest distributing 24 million pounds in 2012.
The Jacksonville Foodfight is one of the largest fundraisers of the year for Second Harvest North Florida.
To order tickets or purchase sponsorship packages, visit jacksonvillefoodfight.org or call 739-7074.
Teens mentoring teens
The McKenzie Noelle Wilson Foundation has partnered with Take Stock in Children to create a new online peer-to-peer tutoring program connecting middle and high school students in Jacksonville.
The program is the “Innovative Mentoring Program Aimed at Connecting Teens.” It encourages high school students to volunteer and to be a positive role model to middle-school students.
The program originated with the foundation’s belief that through volunteering and community involvement, teenagers can recognize their full potential.
High school students volunteer to be tutors in the place of adults because they can relate to their peers and are more familiar with homework.
The partnership with Take Stock in Children was formed because of its mission to use mentors to provide enriching opportunities to middle-school students.
Through a webcam, students can talk one-on-one about homework, FCAT testing and other topics, which alleviates the issue of teenagers having to find transportation to a tutoring location.
Every Wednesday after school, volunteer tutors from The Bolles School use their computer lab to connect with students from Fletcher Middle School, who use the computer lab at McKenzie’s Academic Resource Center, a community center that provides academic programs to students in their neighborhood.
Middle-school students en–rolled in the program also have an opportunity to receive a full college scholarship from Take Stock in Children if they continue to receive tutoring from an upperclassman and mentoring from an adult through high school.
For more information, visit www.caregivegrow.org/teenmentors.