Join Us!
"The Vietnam War"
An Evening with
documentary
film director
Ken Burns
Join our Community Foundation and Rocky Mountain PBS for a preview screening of The Vietnam War, featuring selected previews from the upcoming 10-part documentary. RMPBS will be live streaming a panel discussion and Q&As with filmmaker Ken Burns from Denver, including an opportunity for Grand Junction attendees to submit questions in real time!
We have a limited number of tickets to share with our donors and friends. If you are interested in attending as a guest of WCCF, please call Felicia at 243-3767, or email
[email protected],
by Monday, August 21st to reserve your seat. Tickets are limited!
Wednesday, August 23, 2017 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Avalon Theatre
645 Main Street
Grand Junction
Click
here to watch a preview of the Ken Burns series.
Click
here for Local Voices of Vietnam, produced by RMPBS and 970 West.
Click
here to read the story in the Daily Sentinel Out and About.
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Lunch Lizard Update
Food trucks serve over 24,000 meals this summer
Now in its 3rd summer, the Lunch Lizard Summer Mobile Meals Program served over 24,000 meals this summer - up from 16,000 meals served last summer. More than 3,900 food totes were distributed by Kids Aid along the Lunch Lizard routes. Along with a nutritious meal, volunteers gave away books and organized science experiments, games, bird identification and physical education activities.
Many service clubs and other groups providing volunteer support and activities included Horizon Sunrise Rotary Club, Audubon Society, Altrusa Club of Palisade, Kiwanis Club, INEP, CMU's Physical Education Club, English Language Learners and Grand Junction Rockies.
"Thanks to the Community Foundation, we now have a fleet of three food trucks on three daily routes making seventeen stops, five days a week...WOW! We are truly thankful for WCCF's support to help drive out child hunger... one neighborhood at a time!"
- Dan Sharp, D51 Food and Nutrition Services Director
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Training for Teachers
Thirty D51 teachers
receive training in Fundamentals of Writing
This past June, the Dave and Mary Wood Fund provided a grant for a teacher training workshop on the Fundamentals of Writing.
The 2-day course included methods and tools for teachers to successfully teach writing as a critical skill and included practices to support struggling learners and dyslexic students.
"The WHYs about writing and how to address learner needs - I learned more than I could possibly list here. Thank you for this opportunity!"
- Workshop Participant
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Have a club, group
or organization that wants to learn more about our Community Foundation?
Our Director of Development and Major Gifts, Kristin Lynch, is available to come and speak to your service organization, group or club anytime. Contact Kristin at
[email protected]
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The Western Colorado Community Foundation is confirmed in compliance with National Standards for U.S. Community Foundations by the Council on Foundations.
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Scholarship Program
Continues to Grow
Community Foundation commits over $790,000 to students across seven counties - a 19% increase over last year
The 2017 scholarship season was a very busy time for our scholarship team. A total of 113
students graduating from high school in 2017 were awarded $790,270 in financial support for college over the next four years.
In addition to the 32 different scholarships available on-line, we also manage endowed scholarships for Colorado Northwestern Community College and Delta-Montrose Technical College (now Technical College of the Rockies).
Delta County has the largest number of scholarships for graduating seniors; last May a total of $184,270 in scholarships was awarded to 50 students. Now in its 10th year, our largest scholarship fund is the Genevieve Clough Scholarship. This scholarship supports students in western Garfield County. In 2017, we committed $400,000 over four years to 26 students, honoring Mrs. Clough's legacy to provide young people in her community "a chance to succeed."
One of our scholarship recipients, Christian Richardson, speaks for many.
"Being able to lead my own research project and found my own company is an amazing opportunity that would not have been possible without the support of the Patterson Family and the Bill Patterson Memorial Scholarship. THANK YOU so much!"
Christian graduated from MIT this year and is Founder and CEO of Kelo Labs.
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Dr. Perry Rashleigh
(1934 - 2017)
Honoring a life of caring for others
Born in Kansas, Perry Rashleigh spent a large part of his life in Colorado by choice. He loved hiking, cross-country skiing, trout fishing. His family remembers, "he was hard to keep up with on the trail and in life."
A doctor by training, he specialized in dermatology and with a colleague founded Mountain West Dermatology. He loved teaching medical students through the St. Mary's Family Physician Residency Program, which he did for 30 years.
Dr. Rashleigh was also very involved in the community. Favorite charities included MarillacHealth and St. Mary's Hospital; his wife, Rosemary, was a long-standing supporter of the Mesa County Library.
Our Community Foundation will be receiving a generous legacy donation from Dr. Rashleigh's estate. An endowed field-of-interest fund, the new
Rashleigh Fund will support the donors' favorite causes here in Mesa County: health care and clinics like Marillac and public library services.
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Reflections from the
Executive Director
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It's the middle of August? You have to be kidding! No one in our office knows where the summer went. It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating our 20th anniversary at a luncheon in May, and now it is already back-to-school time. We are pleased to support 200 students with scholarships as they head back to college and vocational training programs. Scholarships that provide support for tuition, books and living expenses are a great gift to give a young person who dreams of the higher education needed to pursue a career or dream job. At the end of August, we are partnering with Rocky Mountain PBS - a fabulous education resource for lifelong learners. For the first time ever, PBS will livestream a special one-time event being held in Denver right to our community using advantaged technology. Our community will gather and participate at the historic Avalon Theatre. Ken Burns'
The Vietnam War was described in a review I read as "as good an occasion as we've ever had for a level-headed national conversation about America's most divisive foreign war." The film has been described as painstakingly thorough and fair. Come and learn firsthand from a documentary film director's experiences filming his 10-part series on the Vietnam War.
-- Anne Wenzel
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