Good News Friday: Good Deeds - June 19, 2015
More than two dozen Sarasota County middle school educators took a field trip of sorts a week after classes ended to learn about local employers that are leaders in their fields. The “Industry Experience Tour,” organized by CareerEdge Funders Collaborative and Sarasota County Schools, aimed to show middle school principals and vice principals the opportunities and career pathways that await youth in the region. They visited Tervis, Voalte, BioLucid and Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Dr. James Locascio, staff scientist at Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, received a Marine Fisheries Initiative Program grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service to study protected populations of goliath group by combining sonar data with recordings of fish sounds. The grant totals more than $306,900 for two years of research starting Sept. 1, 2015. The project will focus on documenting goliath grouper aggregation sites off Jupiter on Florida's Atlantic coast and Lee County on the Gulf coast. It will also focus on a marine protected area in North Carolina used by other grouper species, to monitor for recovery of snowy grouper and document the presence of other species.
Girls Inc. of Sarasota County received a $91,000 grant from the Allen Wirtz Nobbe and Jo Bowen Nobbe Fund at the Community Foundation of Sarasota for the “Grade Level and Beyond” program for girls ages 5-8. The program is designed to prevent summer reading loss, to facilitate reading growth during the summer to ensure girls will be on grade level or beyond, to track and support the girls in the upcoming school year, and to develop shared literacy experiences with the girls and their families.
Suncoast Community Capital received a grant for more than $71,400 from CareerEdge to train more than 300 individuals for the local job force. SCC is the newest partner in the newly formed CareerEdge TDL Tampa Bay partnership that services Manatee, Sarasota, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. SCC will help to manage CareerEdge’s Bridges to Careers program that helps the unemployed obtain career readiness skills. A Bridges to Careers class is scheduled for July 2015 at St. Pete College’s Midtown Center in St. Petersburg, FL. An open house will be held at 5 p.m. June 25 at SPC Downtown Center, 244 2nd Ave. N. for those who are interested in learning more about this program. St. Pete College’s LINCS (Supply Chain Management) program will be offered in partnership with this program. Classes for Manatee and Sarasota counties are being scheduled for Fall 2015.
Children First received a $5,000 grant from the Rays Baseball Foundation, the charitable arm of the Tampa Bay Rays, to provide scholarships for at-risk children, ages birth to 5, to receive full-day early childhood education and care, nutritious meals, and health and developmental screenings at one of Children First’s 13 sites located throughout Sarasota County.
Harvest House Transitional Center, a Sarasota social service and homeless provider, received a donation of 10 dump trucks of fill dirt and top soil from Dakin Dairy Farms to set up water runoff and laying sod at Family Village. The soil, delivered by One for the Road, will cover about 200 yards. Family Village is a partnership effort between the Lee Wetherington Foundation, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County and Harvest House to provide 18 housing units for the region’s homeless U.S. military veteran families. The total value of the goods and services Harvest House received is approximately $4,500.
Gateway Bank hosted a book drive at all three of its branch locations and collected approximately 270 books for the United Way of Manatee County’s “See Spot Read Spot” program. The program is intended to help combat summer learning loss. The books collected are age-appropriate for children ages birth through high school.
Teams from Capgemini visited All Faiths Food Bank to prepare backpacks for the food bank’s BackPack Kids program. Cap Cares Day volunteers broke a record with more than 2,800 bags filled with kid-friendly food, ready for delivery. The bags will be distributed at Sarasota County libraries to children 18 and under all summer long thanks to a new partnership between the organizations.