Central High School students facing the presentation from tony's perspective at the table. Tony Garcia for the Central Tribune
A grant /grant/ is a sum of funding in the form of money either provided by a government or other organizations with a specific reason. On March first of this year two programs at Central High School were chosen to receive grants from the County.
The event was celebrated by leaders, schools, and organizers from all corners of Polk county. Coach Centoni’s Barbell club along with Mr. Hindmans Powerpeers and Y.A.C attended the event regarding these grants. Barbell club associates such as Adrian Garcia, Xavier and I were accompanied by other club attendees.
The event began around 6:05 Hosted by Annie Buse, a prevention coordinator for the county. Central's Barbell club was the first program to be called up to receive their grant of four thousand dollars along with a picture of the students.
Centoni had this to say, “Well on behalf of the central barbell club we just want to say thank you, one of the big things with this grant that we’re excited about is we get to improve our capacity from twenty- eight students that can really gap during a session to forty-four, so we’re really excited, these individuals here i'm just gonna introduce them really quick, we have Adrian today here, Tony, Alice, Mia, Rylan, Ryan, and Samuel, these are just eight of the eighty-four students we’ve had come through our program this year, we have kinda a daily average attendance of about twenty-five in the afternoon and in the morning we have eight, it's hard to get up but Alice and Mia are apart of our breakfast club so anyways really excited about this opportunity and we just want to say thank you to Polk county”.
After the celebration I spoke with Centoni to further expand on him and what barbell does
Who are you?
“I am Jeff Centoni, Health teacher, P.E teacher, and Central barbell club advisor.”
What do you do and what are you representing?
“So central barbell club is a group that meets before school and after school during the week, and it introduces students to the sports of powerlifting and Olympic Weightlifting, this year we've served over eighty students in central barbell club and continue to look to make in-roads into our middle school as well as our high school.”
What did you receive tonight?
“Tonight we received a four thousand dollar grant that will allow us to expand our capacity to fourty-plus students, allowing us to buy four new racks and a platform,”
The Gate Youth association also attended and was awarded four-thousand dollars; they have provided academic, spiritual, and social activities for years to kids 6th through 12th in the Monmouth independence area. The gates representative walked up and took the mic, “So I just want to introduce myself quickly my names Sheila Duluk and i'm privileged to be the president of the gate board of directors I wanted to say a special thank you for this grant, uhm Ben asked me to share with you all since he couldn't be here tonight that this grant specifically will go to help fund our highschool only nights, on friday nights from 7 to 10 so thats a time that's designated and focused for high school students that they can just come and connect with each other and connect with adults outside of our own little school and high school together, so thank you very much”.
Many other organizations within the county attended, such as the Salem dream center with a grant of four thousand dollars to be received by Jenny on the dream center's behalf.
After this Central's very own PowerPeers a leadership group run through our school led by us students was awarded two-thousand dollars, Mr. Hindman was there to receive the grant on PowerPeers behalf with this to say “My names Trevor Hindman Im the PowerPeers advisor at Central High School also a social studies teacher there, first thank you to Polk county and also thank you to all of you that took your time out of your very busy schedules to go through all these applications, this moneys gonna help go towards really, the entire high school and all the students that we serve so thank you again we appreciate it.”
After the awards I interviewed Mr.Hindman to follow up and expand on his group and his plans.
Who are you?
I’m Mr.Hindman Im a central high school teacher.
What do you do and what are you representing?
I coach multiple sports here, I’m a social studies teacher and also the PowerPeers advisor. On the night at Polk County in Dallas I was there representing PowerPeers.
What did you receive that night? And what will it go towards?
We received a mini grant for two-thousand dollars to go towards prizes, and functions related to our spirit cards that we started this year, the spirit cards are meant to have a focus of increasing student involvement and participation, and viewership of other activities that maybe they wouldn't do normally, and so trying to get students to support other students at different functions.
Continuing on with the celebration “Polk Counties forge” I believe was the name was granted two awards both worth one thousand-four hundred-seventy five dollars, the groups representative walked up to the front, speech ready and said “I just want to thank everyone for giving us money for this award, we actually applied for two and I don't know if their gonna be up here separately or not but just in case their not, what is blacksmithing in Falls city? Its for Falls City youth since they don't have as many opportunities up there, it's a collaboration with a basis program, and this is gonna be a trial run kind of during spring and then if it goes well we’re actually working on setting up a program that will go year-round after school teaching youth classes”, they did in fact receive two grants.
A handful of other non-profits around the county received plenty grants as well, like the Dallas downtown association with a grant of four thousand, The Black Rock Wellness in Falls City, the YMCA located near the Ellie food bank in Independence and Musical independence with another four-thousand in funds, fun fact according to their rep march 1st of this year was the shops fifth anniversary.
And lastly on the list. The Campus recreation group for our local Western Oregon University was also present to receive a grant for their new rock climbing activities, this group of two consisted of Henry Doellinger our original Chief Travel Correspondent for centrals tribune who graduated early this year and Zachary Hammerle the assistant Director of Campus recreation for Western. When they received their award they had this to say, “I'm just gonna say a few things, thank you to the committee yall did awesome i'm here listening to all these cool things clubs what a good deal! Uhm also this is probably one of the cool I mean, Independence music that's really rad, but we’re opening up our rockwall to youth for free for the whole summer so for thirteen to basically eighteen year old youth if you want something to do, Henry will teach you how to climb from high standards, also we’re gonna have the parks open all summer thank you thank you thank you! And uh again thanks to Willamette valley as well and Polk county good job!
Annie Buse returned to the microphone after a group from Falls City to close the event. She said “Well I think this night is really exciting cause we get to hear every organization that's gonna be funded this year, we get to hear from again everyone from out to West salem, all the way to Dallas, Central, Falls City, all of the opportunities that are being provided and I think that is so fun and so cool and I think we also got to learn probably some of the things that are happening generally we don't hear that from where we’re at so, I think this night has been really special, the other thing as I wanted to say is that again I just really appreciate the amount of time, the amount of work, the recruitment, the just thoughtfulness in each and every one of your programs and also the time that you took to be able to write some of these applications, your work, the people who you are and what you're about is amazing and i'm truly thankful for that and I know a lot of the Polk County leadership, and our teams, and I know our students will be really excited to take part in the activities that you all are providing Polk County tonight. As you leave today I hope that you share with your friends and your families about these different organizations the different opportunities that are about. On our end we will make sure that your organization is being shared and that the programs that you provide will be provided to as many people as we can cause we want to make sure we can get as many people engaged and take in a part of your program cause it's amazing, it's really amazing! So we will have our prevention page, just so you know we have our Polk County prevention page that will highlight your programs, that will provide some of those start dates and some of those end dates so if your interested you can go to our Polk County prevention page and you’ll be able to see not only some of the opportunities Polk County provides but then you’ll see your mini-grants and that information will be posted up so be on the lookout for that. Lastly is that we are wrapped up a little bit earlier a little bit quicker than we expected which is ok but on the other hand too if you would like we have these beautiful center, florals, centerpieces that your welcome to take we also have lots of cupcakes for you all to enjoy so feel free to see around kinda feel free to get to know each other as well you can network and just get to know everybody here too, we will wrap up for the night but again really appreciate your time and please make sure that your driving home safely it's pretty dark and it was snowing earlier so thank you all and appreciate it."
After the event during the networking period I had a followup with Henry and Zachary by asking some questions, these were their responses.
Who are you
I'm Zach Hammerle, assistant director of campus recreation at Western Oregon University.
2. What do you do and what are you representing today?
So I oversee the aquatics program, climbing wall, outdoor program, and the fitness program. And tonight we were awarded the coolest grant probably of the evening cause we’re opening up our climbing wall to youth, thirteen and up all summer long so when we’re open to public we want everybody climbing for free, we’re gonna train them standardize skills, get them a membership and give em a card and have em climbing and hopefully they become life-long skilled safe climbers. Hey go climb, at the wall cause you need grip strength? Are you part of that barbell club? The most fun way to get better grip strength is climbing, you can look it up.
After that question Henry brought up the idea for an article on Westerns Rock climbing club so stay tuned, coming soon. But with that the barbell club returned home and I got to work unfortunately as you all know internet was down and so was our website so your reading this months old article, but the good news is this news doesn't expire, as of right now these clubs and organizations are still active, if you would like to learn even more about any of the attending groups shoot me an email or you can ask in person. With that being said, I'm Tony Garcia for the Central Tribune. Have a great day and don't forget to wear your seatbelt.