SURF Board Awards $3,500 in Grants

Members of the SURF Board Youth Grantmakers, sponsored by The Community Foundation of Davie County, awarded grant dollars to four youth-led projects in Davie County last Tuesday. Board members presented “big checks” to:

Davie High Leadership Development Class Diversity Lunch Team - $500 Grant funds will pay for food for Diversity Lunches hosted by the class. Approximately 40 students of “different ages, races, stereotypical cliques, religion, and ethnicities” are invited to attend each lunch. Discussions take place on topics chosen by the class.

Matt Webb & Firestorm Paintball Supplies - $750 Grant funds will help purchase supplies for the event, “Paintball, My Anti-Drug”. The event will reach out to students and families of Davie County to show the importance of being drug free to stay in shape for sports.

Advance Fire Department Junior Firefighters - $750 Grants funds will assist with the purchase of protective clothing for Junior Firefighters. Although juniors do not enter burning buildings, they have suffered burns at the fire scene.

DHS Leadership II - $1,500 Grants funds will help with the purchase of laptops for use by students who do not have computers at home to do school work on. The laptops will be available for nightly check-out.

Members of the SURF Board learned about expressing opinions and building consensus as they deliberated. The board was faced with $9,150 in requests and $3,500 they had been entrusted with for youth-led projects.

Members learned to excuse themselves from discussions where they had a conflict of interest and couldn’t be objective. “It was difficult to stay out of the discussion when you had personal knowledge about an applicant or project,” said Amanda Nichols, board member. “There were several times when I wanted to make a comment but I managed not to say anything.” “We were allowed to make one recommendation throughout the deliberation process,” said Iain Langton. “I wanted to make more than one but couldn’t so I had to rely on other board members to make recommendations I could agree with.” “It was a good process,” said Hannah Jakob. “We reached consensus. The debate was tough at times but in the end we chose grants we could all live with.”

For more information about SURF Board Youth Grantmakers or The Community Foundation of Davie County, please contact the Foundation office at 753-6903.