The West Foundation is announcing two Directors’ Choice Imagining Grants today.
Both are for $50,000 with the first grant to be awarded to a non-profit agency that designs a program or service focused on the arts, culture, or environment in Manitowoc County, with the second award going to a non-profit that proposes a program or service providing direct human services to people in the county.
According to West Foundation board member John Jagemann, applicants were asked to “step outside the box and answer the question ‘What could we do with $50,000?’”
Jagemann says the first winner is the Lester Public Library Foundation out of Two Rivers.
“They are putting together a really interesting way to present reading to kids,” Jagemann explained. “They are building a space near the library, and also near one of the parks, they call Story Walk. They take books and laminate pages from them and you go on this walk through the forest or through the park and you read as you go.”
And, the second Imagining grant winner is the National Alliance on Mental Health Manitowoc County.
“Many times, if a law enforcement person has to pick up somebody for whatever, they won’t have enough time to investigate if this is a mental health issue or is this a drug issue,” Jagemann said. “NAMI is a Manitowoc group, plus they are linked with Lighthouse Recovery and a bunch of the other mental health people in town. We liked it because it was bringing all of these agencies together.”
The Foundation received over 50 applicants for the special grant money to help the community.
And, Jagemann told Seehafer News they had so many good applications that they plan to help a 3rd local organization in the near future.
The late John and Ruth West created the West Foundation in 1957 and since Ruth’s passing in 1990, the Foundation Board has distributed over $ 65 million to our lakeshore community.
