Kootenai Electric Round Up grants awarded

The Kootenai Electric Trust Board recently disbursed their 2004 Operation Round Up grants for second quarter. The Trust Board awarded $15,873 to 11 of the 18 applicants.

Recipients and their grants are listed.

$2,500 grants – Twinlow Camp Assembly, to expand handicap accessible facilities; Ronald McDonald House, to provide lodging for families traveling to Spokane while seeking medical care for children; Plummer/Worley Library Friends Inc., to purchase Accelerated Reader books and to help fund their summer reading program; Spirit Lake Elementary School, to upgrade playground equipment to federal and state standards.

$900 grants – Ramsey Elementary Cross Country Program, for track equipment.

$800 grants – John Brown Elementary in Rathdrum, for Accelerated Reader books for the Resource Room; Northwest Sacred Music Chorale, for purchase of vocal music.

$750 grants – Lakeland Junior Olympic Softball Association, to offset uniform costs.

$500 grants – Coeur d’Alene School District, for the Teen Aid Project.

$400 grants – Hayden Lake Elementary, for purchase of early mathematics learning centers.

An individual KEC member received $1,723 to help pay medical bills from an extended illness.

Funding for Operation Round Up is accumulated when KEC “rounds up” the amount of each member’s monthly bill to the nearest dollar. The cumulative round up is then dispersed quarterly to local groups and individual in need.

Third quarter grant applications are due at the KEC office on or before Aug.17. Applications are available in the office or on the KEC Web site at www.kec.com

• The Verizon Foundation recently awarded $30,000 in literacy grants to local nonprofit organizations.

Recipients were chosen based on community need, innovation, ability to execute, evaluation methods and other factors.

The Verizon grants focus on projects that link improved literacy rates to a better-educated and better-prepared work force.

Recipients are listed.

A.B. McDonald Elementary School, Moscow, received $7,500 to establish the Everybody Reads! Program, which provides specialized reading instruction to at-risk students in grade levels K-3. Funding will also help coordinate volunteer training for the reading-tutor program and establish early literacy workshops for parents.

Columbia Basin Educational Association, of Spokane was awarded $2,500 to help fund the Early Childhood Literacy Project, which helps preschoolers obtain learning skills through the use of computers. Funding will target communities served by Verizon, including Newport, Pullman and the Farming area of south Spokane and Whitman counties.

The Community Action Partnership, based in Sandpoint, received $5,000 to fund its Reading Rainbow project. The group provides books and a three-day literacy session to 50 low-income families in Bonner County and surrounding areas.

First Book – Panhandle of North Idaho, of Sandpoint, will get $5,000 to provide books to low-income, at-risk children in Bonner, Kootenai, Boundary and Shoshone counties. Each of the children attending North Idaho College’s Head Start program will receive one book per month for one year, starting this fall.

Kellogg School District will receive $7,500 to expand the Waterford Early Reading Program software to its new kindergarten classroom at Sunnyside Elementary School.

Post Falls Middle School was awarded a $2,500 grant for its Alternate Reading Methods project, which is designed to bring hesitant readers in grades 3-8 up to grade level

The Verizon Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications, a Dow 30 company. In 2003 the foundation awarded more than 21,000 grants totaling about $70 million to charitable and nonprofit agencies that focus on improving basic and computer literacy, enriching communities through technology and creating a skilled work force.