The Chilkat Valley Community Foundation grant award celebration and Chilkat Valley Preschool open house drew more than 100 people last Thursday evening.
“We celebrated the generosity of our community and then highlighted the good work that can come out of a community coming together,” Community Foundation Program Director Sara Chapell said. “The preschool could not be a better example. That’s why it was so well attended, because people so feel connected to the success of Chilkat Valley Preschool.”
The Community Foundation provided just more than $24,000 in grants to local organizations and non-profits.
Several new grantees were awarded funding this year including the Salvation Army for its food bank program. Haines Head Start received a grant to support a new early childhood curriculum.
The Haines School Library also received funding to support a new after school puppeteering workshop where Geppetto’s Junkyard members will work with students to build puppets, write scripts and produce a show that will be performed at the Alaska Arts Confluence during First Friday this spring.
The Community Foundation’s funds were bolstered by an additional $5,000 this year after the Alaska Community Foundation partnered with the Rasmuson Foundation in an effort to provide more funding to affiliates across the state, Chapell said.
“That ($5,000) can be used anyway we want and we decided this year we wanted to push it back into the community because we saw a real need with other grant programs dropping down,” Chapell said. “State funding is down and borough funding isn’t as robust as in years past.”
The Community Foundation manages multiple investment funds and a portion of that investment income is given out in the form of grants each year. See full list of grantees on page 10.