Wishes granted

By LEE WARD / THE INDEPENDENT

ASHLAND July 17, 2008 12:08 pm

— For children spending time at the Debord Terrace Community Center, the summer is full of games, arts, crafts, water play and movies, as well as making ice cream and tye-dying T-shirts — activities made possible by a $10,000 Impact grant from the Elks Foundation.
Geri Willis, coordinator of the Ashland Family Resource Center and writer of the grant request, said the Ashland group was one of a few in the country to get the maximum amount of money the grant offered.
Impact grants are larger than many Elks grants and aim to help a community address unmet needs.
“It’s something for kids to do in the summer,” Willis said. “We’re getting a good turnout because kids get bored and want something to do.”
More than 2,000 applications were submitted for a total of $500,000 in grant money across the county.
The four-week program will serve at least 35 students kindergarten age through eighth grade and not just children from Debord Terrace, Rose-Linda Stafford, site director for Schools of the 21st Century.
“We get kids from all over,” she said, including Hatcher and Verity. “Everything is paid for by the grant.”
Activities include studies about the upcoming Olympic games, sewing, using the Internet to research topics, and making arts and crafts project. Lunch is included each day. Camp started July 7 and will continue through the end of the month from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.
In addition to the four-week camp, the Elks Lodge 350 in Ashland has offered one Saturday program per month since January. Elks members volunteer.
Stafford said one of the programs, the Earth Day project, had children planting flowers in their community.
“It gets the parents involved, too,” Stafford said. “They would see the kids planting flowers and they’d come over and work, too.”
The Debord programs are among many the Elks is involved in for the benefit of the community and area children.
Each year for decades, the Elks has hosted Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners for the needy. There also is a children’s Christmas party and the Elks sponsors the oldest continuous Boy Scout troop in the area.
The organization offers various scholarships and has a part in Shop with a Cop, school safety patrol and runs its own drug awareness program as well as purchases shoes and clothing for children at the Ramey Homes and for years, the Elks sponsored Little League teams.
In a nod to the birthday of Noah Webster, which is October, the Elks has a dictionary scholarship, providing third-graders in the Ashland schools and Holy Family School with his or her own dictionary.
LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.

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