Archive for the ‘YEP’ Category

St. James Community Foundation Grants $2,000 to YEP Coffeehouse

(Pictured left to right: Terrill Story, Ramona Rhinhart, YEP board members, and Community Foundation board members: Kelly Money, Errica Hartley, Lindsey Pantaleo, Jenna Davis, & Jon Hartley.)

Recently, the St. James Area Community Foundation granted $2,000 to the St. James Youth Empowerment Program (YEP) to help them with their Firehouse Coffee Shop. St. James YEP’s Firehouse Coffee Shop has emerged from a place-based grant from the Rural School Partnership’s Coover grants program.

The partnership between the local community foundation and the school-centered YEP program is exactly the kind of collaboration that is needed to strengthen school and community in small towns.  Congratulations to everyone in St. James for this good work.

Also in the last few weeks, the St. James Area CF threw a New Year’s Eve Gala at Matt’s Steakhouse, where they raised more than $10,000, as posted on their Facebook page.

If you would like to learn more about the Firehouse Coffee Shop project, go to the St. James YEP link at http://yep.groupspot.net/St.-James/Default.aspx.

RSP Awards $9,964 in Conservation Grants to Six Districts for Student-Led Projects

The Rural Schools Partnership has awarded $9,964 in Student Conservation grants to six southern Missouri school districts for student-led environmental projects ranging from the building and maintenance of outdoor classrooms in Ozark to the expansion of a community recycling program in Gainesville.

The Student Conservation grants are funded through the Community Foundation of the Ozarks’ Rural Schools Conservation Fund and the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation Grant Fund. Recipient districts are partners of the CFO’s Rural Schools Partnership, which focuses on sustaining rural schools as anchors of their communities.

“The conservation/environmental grants are selected on the basis of student involvement and community impact,” said Julie Leeth, Rural Schools Coordinator and Executive Vice President of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. “All of the selected projects will enhance the education of the involved students and at the same time better the community at large, which is the essence of place-based education.”

To learn about RSP’s other grant opportunities, click here.

The Student Conservation grants were awarded to the following student-led projects:

• $1,325 to Ozark Upper Elementary School for maintenance of the campus’s outdoor classrooms and to build a network of trails between them, as well as the completion of a Native Missouri Plant Garden.

• $1,573 to Stockton High School’s Stockton Teen Empowerment Project (STEP) to help create, maintain and publicize a trail network within the community and in Stockton State Park. Benches made of recycled materials will be part of the project.

• $1,235 to Galena High School for a collaborative effort to create a small food plot on vacant land, as well as utilization cages and trail cameras, that will allow students to study and observe local wildlife.

• $1,848 to the Hartville R-II School District to help transform a vacant area on the school’s campus into a native flower and vegetable garden, with a goal of eventually contributing to the district food service’s Garden to School program.

• $1,983 to the Ozark County Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) for expansion of the group’s citywide recycling program in Gainesville. Funds will be used to purchase more receptacles to place in school and public facilities, as well as extra bags and plastic liners.

• $2,000 to Willow Springs Elementary School to help improve the district’s outdoor classroom, including a sand sensory box for science classes, picnic tables and the planting of fruit orchard for fourth graders, with produce eventually being sold at community events.

The Ozark County Youth Empowerment Project and Stockton Teen Empowerment Project are two of 35 chapters of the CFO’s Youth Empowerment Project, which encourages youth philanthropy through education, service learning, grantmaking and fundraising.

YEP Conference Brings Young Philanthropists Together

On Oct. 20, more than 175 community-minded students from across the Ozarks came together for a day of learning at the annual YEP Youth Philanthropy Conference. Representing 24 schools, the students shared ideas on how to make their schools and towns more vibrant places, listened to thoughts from local philanthropist Doug Pitt, and celebrated what it means to be Yeppers.

The Youth Empowerment Project is designed to promote volunteerism, grantmaking, fundraising and education to get mostly high-school and some middle-school students involved in community-based philanthropy. The YEP program now includes chapters at 35 schools.

You can view photos from the conference, hosted at Drury University, at the YEP website, yepozarks.org, and check out individual chapter pages and brand-new group photos here (thanks for posing in the morning cold, kids).

To learn more about YEP, and how your school might start a chapter, contact Bridget Dierks by e-mail, or call (417) 864-6199.

Go to yepozarks.org. Click “Media” to view photos.

Click here to learn more about individual YEP chapters.