NEWS: How you can help provide summer meals to students

SC Promise Zone

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News release  |  The S.C. Department of Education’s Office of Health and Nutrition is offering an excellent opportunity for local government agencies, school districts, faith-based and private nonprofit organizations to provide summer meals to children by becoming a sponsor or a summer meal site for our Summer Meals Program.   (Learn how to become a sponsor or site through the link at the bottom of this post.)

“Summertime is a time to play, but it is also a time to remember to eat right. Through our summer meals program, we again provided approximately four million meals to students in need,” said S.C. State Superintendent Molly Spearman.

The program is funded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and administered by the South Carolina Department of Education to serve healthy meals to children during the summer months when school is not in session.
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NEWS: Center to offer two grant-writing courses in Promise Zone

SC Promise Zone

One-day, intensive training sessions seek to catalyze requests for funding in region

The Center for a Better South will offer one-day grant-writing courses in February and March by recognized professionals to help organizations improve skills for seeking federal funding available through the S.C. Promise Zone.

“We’ve heard in focus groups this fall from Jasper County to Barnwell County that people want specialized training so that they can apply for various federal grants that are available to organizations and communities through the Promise Zone designation,” Better South President Andy Brack said.  “Our new grant-writing sessions are the first of several entrepreneurial training opportunities designed to help people learn more so we can accomplish Promise Zone goals.” Read more →

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NEWS: 17 complete intensive grant training program

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Participants in SouthCarolina Alliance's December grant-writing workshop.

Story below.  Workshop participants include, from left: Pamela Davis, Barnwell Parks and Rec; Phillip Ford, Regional Medical Center, Orangeburg; Tim Hicks, Barnwell School District 45; Michele Cardwell, USDA State Office – Columbia; Sheena Solomon, Hampton School District 2; Johnny Davis, Jasper County Parks and Rec; Danny Lucas, Estill Town Administrator; Mallory Biering, Keep Bamberg Beautiful; mDevona Youmans, Hampton School District 2; Brittany Barnwell, Bamberg County Emergency Services; Rebecca Owens, Hampton County; Kathy Tharin, Allendale PZ Action Team; Erica Salley, USDA State Office – Columbia; Russell Wells, Jasper County Emergency Services; Michelle Strickland, Walterboro Tourism Director; Pam Nobles, Barnwell, SCA; and Donald Dodd, Jasper County Fire & Rescue. (HIGH-RES PHOTO DOWNLOAD)

Four-day program prepares Promise Zone partners on how to seek funding

JAN. 8, 2017 – Seventeen Promise Zone representatives recently completed an intensive, four-day Grant Writing Certification Program offered by SouthernCarolina Alliance to give them better tools to seek grants and take advantage of opportunities offered by the Promise Zone designation.

“We have heard some frustrations from our partners, supporters and the general public on how hard it is to find relevant grant opportunities, conduct appropriate research, write compelling applications and win grant money that’s available,” said Promise Zone Coordinator Dean Van Pelt.  “Based on input from several focus groups, the Promise Zone’s lead organizer, SouthernCarolina Alliance, contracted with the University of South Carolina to offer a four-day grant-writing program to improve the skill sets of our partners and supporters so we can write more and better applications, which we hope will lead to more funding to help people in our six-county region.” Read more →

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OP-ED: Promise Zone keeps pushing for regional progress

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Participants worked on an exercise during the December grant-writing workshop.

Participants worked on an exercise during the December grant-writing workshop.

By Andy Brack, Center for a Better South  |  There’s a palpable sense of energy flowing through the six counties of the southern tip of South Carolina in the federally-designated Promise Zone, which is now a year and a half old.

Walk along a downtown street or drive past expanding businesses and you get a tingling that things are happening.  Two years ago, the SouthernCarolina Alliance, lead partner of the Promise Zone, was about the only regional organization that worked to pull people together to develop projects to benefit the area.  Fortunately, the organization had the foresight in 2014 to try to win the Promise Zone designation as a way to bolster inter-agency collaboration and get local, state and federal organizations in silos to come out into the open and work better together. Read more →

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