Community Foundation of the Ozarks

Chris Neale, Superintendent and CF of the Hermann Area President, Missy Frink, and Sam Frink.

Courtesy of the Community Foundation of the Hermann Area.

April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day, the kickoff day for Autism Awareness Month. Autism Spectrum Disorders are on the rise. Recent reports indicate that 1 in 88 people have a diagnosis somewhere along the autism spectrum. Previous statistics showed the incidence to be about 1 in 115. Interestingly, Missouri records about 1 in 77 people as having an autism spectrum disorder.

Sam and Missy Frink of Hermann and using April 2, 2012 as the day to begin matching donations to Wyatt’s Fund. To date, the fund has amassed $12,250 to benefit students in the Gasconade County R-I School District. With the matching funds from the Frinks, the fund will now total $14,500.  The total Wyatt’s Fund challenge for 2012 is to hit $20,000. That means that the Frinks will match up to another $2,750.

These monies are funding supportive services for people of the Hermann area who struggle with autism. Gasconade County R-I Schools is developing and equipping a sensory break room along with selecting training for teachers. The third prong of the program will be to provide training and support to community members and surrounding schools. While parents will benefit from the training, other possible interest groups might include health care and day care providers, Sunday School teachers, and beauticians. Anyone who interacts with people with autism will find some benefit in coming to know how excess or unwelcome stimulation can create barriers for these folks.

The Frinks want to remind the public that the matching funds needn’t come in $1,000 increments. “We welcome every gift to support these folks. $500, $100, $50, $25, or even $10 can be put to good use,” said Missy Frink.

Anyone wanting further information should contact Chris Neale, President of the Community Foundation of the Hermann Area. Donations can be mailed to PO Box 62, Hermann, MO 65041. All donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

More than 60 CFO affiliate presidents and board members attending today’s annual conference in Springfield were encouraged to think expansively about the leadership and resource development roles they can offer as anchors in their communities.

They shared stories of successful collaborations fostered through listening to their communities and convening the right people to accomplish shared goals. Greater Seymour Community Foundation founder and board member Ron Geidd recalled how the affiliate led a Seymour 2026 long-range planning process that uncovered a serious concern among residents that the frequently used train tracks through the center of town cut off access to the fire department when trains rolled through. That led to construction of a second fire station on the other side of the tracks to allay those fears.

A larger affiliate, the Joplin-based Community Foundation of Southwest Missouri, used a recent grant cycle for tornado recovery to encourage a number of groups to collaborate on one application to fund much-needed affordable housing, and that coalition received CFSWMO’s largest grant ever of $1.5 million.

CFO President Brian Fogle said it’s not easy work, nor does it promise quick results. But offering community foundations as “safe spaces” to convene multiple stakeholders on community issues will lead to more effective grantmaking, and produce stronger results to build new assets. (more…)

One of the common refrains of emergency-management professionals is “plan the work, then work the plan.”

That’s what Jennifer Tilley has done as principal of Nixa’s Early Learning Center – fire drills, tornado drills, intruder drills, even earthquake drills. And those drills – along with the fortuitous arrival of emergency radios funded by the Nixa Community Foundation – served her well during a recent emergency that required a schoolwide evacuation.

The Nixa Community Foundation awarded the school a grant for $1,600 to replace four of its aging emergency radios. The school resource officer got a great bid that actually purchased seven radios with the funding. After the radios arrived and were programmed with the local frequencies, Tilley distributed them to classroom teachers – the seven new radios, and a couple of older ones still in use, meant every classroom now had an emergency radio.

A week later, on March 2, a car crashed near the school and hit a natural gas pipeline that serves the school and a nearby manufacturing plant. A few minutes later, firefighters told school officials to evacuate the school, which has about 100 students ages 3-5 and 32 staff members.

Tilley says she immediately kicked into her emergency training, but the planned evacuation meeting spot was too close to the gas leak. Orders from the fire department kept changing in the first chaotic minutes as teachers started hustling students to different areas of  the parking lot and finally to a spot where busses would pick them up to go to the community center.

“We literally had all of our students and staff accounted for and on the buses in three minutes,” Tilley said. “I know it was those radios, I know it was.”

She said the staff could listen to the frequencies used for the buses and the school resource officers as well as communicate the changes of direction the evacuation was taking.

Once at the center, she wanted to make sure the situation was tightly controlled so they could keep careful track of the worried parents as they arrived to pick up their kids.

“We would radio the teacher to say a parent had arrived so we could have an actual one-on-one handoff,” she said.

“I cringe to think what might have happened had we not had the excellent means of communication on that day,” Tilley wrote afterward to NCF President Sharon Whitehill-Gray. “The timing could not have been better.”

For Tilley’s part, she said the experience helped improved their emergency planning even more. She said the school has put together a backpack of books to entertain the kids. She was lucky, she said, that a gentleman visiting the school that day to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday brought his books with him when he evacuated. She’s adding a few other items such as diapers and wipes for the special-needs students who go to the school.

“Other than those few things,” she said, “everything went just like clockwork according to our plan.”