On Thursday, March 14, our community came together at the Annual Dinner of the United Way to celebrate the year that was for our organization. Some of these highlights included our annual “Day of Caring” in August.
This was a day when 240 individuals from across our county came together to provide a day of service to many local non-profits in need of volunteers to paint, landscape, build, and so much more.
Another was our Big Red Bookshelf program where we distribute thousands of books for children birth to third grade in 9 bookshelves county-wide in order to promote literacy and reading skills which are vital to our community. We also touched on our pantry assistance program, which saw $7,000 given to our local food pantries who were seeing increased traffic because of the government shutdown in January.
All of this was made possible because of you, the Richland County residents who supported your local United Way. Beyond those programs listed above, we were able to provide funding to 47 different programs in 18 agencies throughout Richland County, affecting thousands of residents in our community. These programs provide support to survivors of domestic violence, care and support to those dealing with ravages of addiction, safe places and mentors for children, or advocates and services for our senior population just to name a few.
As we closed our dinner, we were able to excitedly announce to those in attendance and our community that we had raised $1,427,545, or over 100 percent, of our goal for a second year! This could not have been accomplished without a true team effort and we had so many help us throughout business and organizations in Richland County. Special thanks goes out to Mark Masters, President and CEO of Mechanics Bank, for his tireless effort as campaign chair.
We are truly awed and indebted to this community for its faith and support of our organization. We treat this support with reverence because we do not take this responsibility of reinvesting your dollars lightly. We continue to work with our partners to ensure that they are providing the highest caliber of programs for the community, and we are confident in their abilities.
In closing, I want to thank everyone in this great community of ours for your support, we are successful because of you and I look forward to sharing more great examples of the wonderful impact we can all make when we come together to address common causes.
Dan Varn
Executive Director
United Way of Richland County
