Local organization rewards teachers with grant money

JACKSON, Tenn. — A local financial institution is rewarding local teachers with an incentive to further the education of students from elementary school to college.

The Leaders Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization of Leaders Credit Union. Their goal is to invest in local schools and colleges through grants, scholarships, and financial literacy resources.

Leaders with the Foundation hope that with this grant they can ease the financial burden on teachers in West Tennessee.

“We just gave away $20,000 tonight. We do the same thing with collegiate scholarships. We’re already working on workforce development scholarships. So we just want to make sure we’re providing funds for the community to help with educational opportunities,” said Leigh Anne Bentley, the President of Leaders Education Foundation.

The money used in these grants came from foundation sponsorships and membership fees. Earlier in the year, teachers submitted a video on social media describing why they needed the grant and where it would be used as a grant proposal.

These videos were then posted on the Leaders Education Foundation social media pages. The Foundation received a total of 36 grant proposals and the top 20 most liked videos were selected as winners.

One of the winners, Dr. Callie Dollar, described how it feels to be chosen and how appreciative she is.

“Well first I’d like to say that I’m truly humbled to have received this grant for the third time from the Leaders Education Foundation, and it means so much to us because we’re able to do things for our children that would typically be outside of our budget limitations and honestly brings things into the classroom that we don’t have the funding for,” Dollar said.

What the teachers decided to spend the money on varied greatly. Some teachers wanted to use the funds for a class project like hatching chickens or creating a new class garden. Others wanted to use the funds to supply their classrooms with updated equipment.

“In our middle school program, we have something called the Air Kinder, which means children of the earth. And we’re going to have a tower garden with led lights, and we hope that we have such a surplus in our garden that were able to donate some of that produce to ComeUnity Cafe,” Dollar said.

There was $20,000 given and each winner chosen won a thousand dollars in grant money.

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