Good Tidings News from the Hampton Roads Community Foundation
S p r i n g / Su m m e r
2018
Photo by Glen McClure
Recent Grants Alex Kmiechiak (left), Bobbi Ann Gordon and Dyontay Beale learn how to test water quality in the retention pond behind King’s Fork High School.
Connecting the Classroom with the Environment
Teens Learn to Care for Waterways
Two years ago, Dyontay Beale didn’t know much about sea-level rise. But learning about the Nansemond River, which flows through his hometown, inspired this Suffolk junior to work on a waterway preservation proposal for the Suffolk City Council. Beale, a three-sport athlete and president of the King’s Fork High School Ecology Club, is among 100 students at his school learning to be good stewards of our region’s waterways. All are either in King’s Fork’s ecology club or Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. They are part of the Connecting the Classroom with the Environment program sponsored by the Nansemond River Preservation Alliance. Since 2012, Hampton Roads Community Foundation grants to the Alliance, Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center and the Elizabeth River Project have helped more than 20,000 area students understand why caring for waterways is important. In Suffolk, a community foundation grant funds a part-time Nansemond River Preservation Alliance staff member and pays for equipment and supplies. The high school program builds upon a Suffolk middle school program the Alliance started in 2013 with help from a community foundation environmental grant. King’s Fork High School students like Beale are learning how “what they do on land affects the waterways,” says Cindy Pinell, the Nansemond River Preservation Alliance’s high The amount of grants school program manager. Among the students she teaches is 10th-grader Jack Van Straten, who also and scholarships we put was in the Alliance’s middleC O N T I N U E D P. 3 into action in 2017. school environmental program.
$15.6 + million:
................................................. The Hampton Roads Community Foundation recently awarded the following competitive grants to area nonprofit organizations. Grants were made possible by donors’ fieldof-interest and unrestricted funds. Recipients are: ................................................. Ability Center of Virginia , $2,500 from The Laura Turner Fund to support the expansion of social and recreational day programs for adults with cerebral palsy.
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Business Consortium for Arts Support , $475,000 to help support 38
performing and visual arts organizations. (Grant provided from the Ashinoff Family Fund for the Arts, Community Fund for Arts and Culture, Lee A. & Helen G. Gifford Endowment for the Cultural and Performing Arts, William A. Goldback Fund, Paul S. Huber Memorial Fund, Perry and Bunny Morgan Fund, the John L. Roper, 2nd and Sara Dryfoos Roper Fund and the Tyler Cultural Fund.)
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Chesapeake Humane Society , $60,000 from the Alfred L. Nicholson Fund for animal welfare to improve the animal shelter and purchase equipment. .................................................
Children’s Assistive Technology Service , $2,000 from the Jennifer Lynn Gray Fund to purchase communication devices for a lending library for families with children who have a diagnosed communications delay.
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Communities in Schools of Virginia ,
$12,500 from the Harry F. Wall Memorial Fund for a site coordinator for Hampton High School and the Performance Learning Center to connect students in danger of dropping out of school with services to help them graduate and remain successful after graduation. ........................ C O N T I N U E D P. 5