NEWS RELEASE

Each year, Impact 100 awards every penny of membership funds in grants to local nonprofits. On April 16th, the membership of Impact 100 held their vote to select the winners of this year’s award of four $100,000 grants bringing the seven year total of giving to over $2.5 million.

The four winners chosen at the 2015 Annual Meeting include:

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY MEDICAL SOCIETY FOUNDATION: The Foundation was started in 2012 to support volunteer physicians who donate their time to patient care through a program called “We Care”. The We Care Clinic program has never had a space dedicated just for this program and the program has also suffered from overall budget cuts to the health department. Yet statistics show how effective this We Care Clinic can be in keeping patients from expensive emergency room visits and from being readmitted to the hospital with all those associated high costs. The Foundation is asking Impact 100 for funding to remodel a space that has been leased to them from the Gifford Health Center for $1.00 per year. They need money for waiting room furniture, examination room furnishings, and a small amount of money to market the availability of these service to IRC residents.

LITERACY SERVICES OF INDIAN RIVER COUNTY: Literary Services of IRC calls its transformational program “Engaging Parents Now for Student Success.” This initiative will create a pilot program called PASE (Parents Advocating for Student Excellence) based on work done by the Concilio organization. There is an unacceptable number of children struggling to learn to read in IRC and Literary Services understands that parents do not always know how to help their children gain better skills. PASE would help parents become role models for their children; teach parents to navigate the school system on behalf of their children; and demonstrate ways to create a supportive home environment for these struggling children. Literary Services is asking Impact 100 for funds to purchase the copyrighted PASE program materials and receive professional coaching from Concilio and then hire a Program Coordinator and a facilitator to begin teaching these skills to parents in IRC.

SENIOR RESOURCE ASSOCIATION: Senior Resource Association provides services to older adults through many programs including Meals on Wheels, Nutrition Education, Counseling Services, and Adult Day Health Care. SRA has two Adult Day Health Care facilities in IR County, one in Vero Beach and one in Sebastian. SRA is asking Impact 100 for funds to help transform the Sebastian Adult Day Care Center in the same manner they remodeled the Vero Beach Center. They need to make the Sebastian Center better able to handle the needs of seniors who have various cognitive or physical disabilities by installing handicapped approved bathrooms, better lighting, safer flooring, new kitchen equipment and a variety of other improvements.

VISITING NURSE ASSOCIATION OF THE TREASURE COAST: The Visiting Nurse Association’s mission is to provide compassionate innovative care of the highest quality for patients, caregivers needing home health, hospice and community health care. They are proposing a new program to introduce music therapy to help bring more comfort and less pain to their hospice patients and to their in-home Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients. Such programs are used in other hospices around the country but there is no such program at VNA in Indian River County. VNA is asking Impact 100 for a grant to buy musical instruments, sheet music and recorded music and to fund music therapists and travel costs for those therapists.

In addition, the following three nonprofits will split the remaining amount, allowing them each to receive $18,000.

• Pelican Island Audubon Society
• The Education Foundation of Indian River County
• Vero Beach Theatre Guild

“The grant process began last September when all local nonprofits were invited to attend the Impact 100 Grant Informational Session”, explains President Judy Peschio. “The grants awarded by Impact 100 are for transformational, high-impact projects.”

“We are delighted with the strong grants that we are putting forth to our membership. The fact that we are maintaining a membership of over 400 enables us to continue to award four $100,000 grants to our community,” explains Peschio. “Thanks to the efforts of our members this year, and in the previous six years, we will have the privilege of surpassing the $2.5 million mark in total grants this year. This is a tribute to the women of Indian River County.”

Find out more about Impact 100 by visiting http://www.impact100ir.com or on Facebook, or on http://www.youtube.com.