Friday, September 11, 2009
Center will use gift to fund scholarships
Have you heard?
JoAnne Poindexter
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The Civitan Club of Roanoke Valley recently donated $10,000 to the Blue Ridge Autism and Achievement Center.
The center is a newly merged, private day school for children with autism and learning disabilities and will use the donation to fund scholarships for needy students.
The Achievement Center, founded in 1975, works with children ages 5 to 14 who have learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder.
Blue Ridge Autism Center, founded in 2002, is a private center established by a group of parents and professionals dedicated to providing services to children with autism and their families.
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The Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank in Salem and the state's other six food banks are distributing about 1.5 million pounds of food that was purchased with $1 million in state money allocated to the Federation of Virginia Food Banks.
The allocation marks the first time the Virginia General Assembly has appropriated money from the state budget for the food banks.
Each food bank received seven truckloads of food.
Virginia's food banks have experienced 20 percent to 40 percent increases in demand over the past couple of years because of the troubled economy, according to a news release.
The allocation means that the "safety net for hundreds of thousands people will get a little bigger in such a challenging economic time," said Leslie Van Horn, executive director of the Federation of Virginia Food Banks.
The federation bought food from Virginia suppliers on behalf of the food banks to leverage its buying power, Van Horn said.
The Southwestern Virginia Second Harvest Food Bank, founded in 1981, is an affiliate member of Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest.
It channels more than 13 million pounds of food through a network of more than 350 partner feeding programs in a 26-county and 10-city region that includes the Roanoke Valley.
For more information, visit www.swvafoodbank.org.
