Millions of children have been served through Grandmas Gifts Projects.

Grandma’s Gifts works to:
1.    Provide Goods to people of the Appalachian Region  
2.    Provide Services to people of the Appalachian Region
3.    Provide Opportunities for people of the Appalachian Region and groups to be involved in service.
4.    Educate others on how they can make a difference!
5.    Advocate for service, literacy, education, youth empowerment, and Appalachia.  

For project photo gallery click here!

Valentines for Veterans
This project is used as a teaching tool for kids with whom we share the call to service. This project lets them see how easily they can touch the lives of others.  With supplies such as construction paper, stickers, markers, doilies, crayons, glue, and lots of glitter purchased by Grandmas Gifts, over 9,000 valentines have been made by college, elementary, middle, and high school students.  These beautiful valentines are then shipped to a VA hospital in Chillicothe, Ohio and Huntington, West Virginia.

Christmas Angel Program  
Thousands of children referred by social service agencies have received coats, toys, books, and candy on Christmas morning. The funds for these gifts are received from folks living all across the United States, and even all over the world!  Each fall Grandmas Gifts sends a yearly update letter outlining the accomplishments of the organization during the past year. How does one measure the impact when a needy child sees a large stack of brightly wrapped gifts where they feared there would be none?

Trick-or-Teeth!
At Grandmas Gifts we believe that kids who establish healthy habits early in life, will carry that behavior into adulthood. Having worked with the health departments in the past, we were greatly disturbed by the number of children without items for proper dental care. Due to the SWEETNESS of Halloween, we figured there was no better time to start taking care of your teeth than now. For such an occasion and for Make-A-Difference Day, we organized Trick-or-Teeth! in conjunction with Trick-or-Treat. Thus, throughout October we worked with high school groups, middle school classes, and graduate students to collect toothbrushes, toothpaste, and dental floss, to send to county and city health departments in Appalachia. Trick-or-Teeth! is about changing someones life, one tooth brush at a time!

Thanksgiving Turkey Sculpture
Emily and her father built a giant turkey head and tail and then asked people from the community to help build the turkeys body by stacking donated canned food on bales of hay. These large stacks of food make the turkeys middle. The food is then boxed and the boxes are then delivered to needy families and battered womens shelter so that they may enjoy a family holiday at Thanksgiving. More than 10,000lbs of food have been donated!

Spring Clean Book Drive
This has become Grandmas Gifts signature project. What began with asking friends and neighbors to donate books as they clean their closets and shelves each spring has grown into a project resulting in the donation of more than 650,000 books to Appalachia. Each spring I approach a local school district and ask for their help in collecting books. Each child is given a flier to take home which explains the project and asks for the donation of new or gently used children's books. Collection boxes are placed in local grocery stores, libraries, and community centers. Through the generosity of thousands of members of my community, several elementary schools now have lending libraries. Collections of books have also been placed in hospitals, battered family shelters, health clinics, child welfare agencies, and bookmobiles. Now that word of our book collecting has become common knowledge in my community, books are regularly being dropped at my home. I am very grateful to the thousands of children and families who have reached out to help children in need.

Ohio University Southern Campus- Academy of Excellence Scholarships
Grandmas Gifts provides scholarships so that needy children may attend a summer camp for the talented and gifted. This camp is held at the Ohio University Southern Campus. At camp the kids can take classes on first aid, acting, sing language, sports and health, art, world politics, and much much more!

Educational Experiences: Field Trips and Special Occasions 
COSI ON WHEELS 1999 - Through a grant from the Escape Corporation, Grandmas Gifts brought the Columbus Center of Science and Industry Science on Wheels program to the students of a needy Appalachian school. This program provided a day of hands-on science with a lot of fun! Emily then recruited kids from her high school to help as well as high school students from the receiving school district.
COSI TRIP 2000- In May 2000 Grandmas Gifts was able to bring 125 kids to COSI for the day! This trip was made possible by The Dublin Rotary, individual supporters, and COSI! We all had a great time and even got to go see a show in the dome theater.
ZOO TRIP 2000- In May 2000 Grandmas Gifts made it possible to bring 250 kids to the zoo, with help from The Dublin Rotary, Sears, and a few individual supporters. Not only was this trip educational but fun! We ended the day with cool Popsicles!
COSI ON WHEELS 2002 By partnering with the Womens Club of Ironton, Ohio we were able to again bring the Columbus Center of Science and Industry Science on Wheels program to the students of a needy Appalachian school. This program provided a day of hands-on science with a lot of fun! We blasted off into space!

Free Eyeglasses and Vision Screening
While attending the Presidents Summit for Americas Future, Emily heard Mrs. Nancy Reagan tell a story that touched her heart. Mrs. Reagan said that when President Reagan was a child, his school nurse noticed that he was having problems reading the board and seeing a pitched baseball.  The nurse, from her own pocket, paid for President Reagans first pair of glasses. Who knows what would have happened if he had not received those glasses. The course of history could have been changed by the one caring act!
When Emily arrived home from the Summit, she knew that she must find a way for Appalachian children to receive vision screenings when their parents could not afford to have those screenings done. How could they learn to read if they could not see the print in the books? Emily made a phone call to Lenscrafters, and after explaining her project, they agreed to provide free vision screenings and eyeglasses to children who were referred by Grandmas Gifts. Lenscrafters is truly carrying on the vision of the Summit.

Rainbow Project
After the floods that literally washed Appalachian towns down mountainsides ended and the damage was surveyed, it became more apparent that everyone needed some help.  In years past Grandmas Gifts had worked to provide book bags and school supplies to Appalachian children, yet it seemed that more people needed help.  Thus the Rainbow Project was born. Everyone needs markers, pencils, paper, and a ruler to go back to school in the fall, yet these much needed supplies are expensive and not every family can afford such items.  Originally a Make-A-Difference Day project, Gifts collects school supplies to send to schools and children for their return to school in the fall. These donations were to be the light at the end of the storm.

Science-by-Mail
Grandmas Gifts has made this year-long, hands-on science exploration available to children attending schools in Appalachia. These schools focus on seeing that the building is warm and that the electricity is functional. Grandmas Gifts steps in to provide those little extras that most of us take for granted. We want these kids to understand that science is happening around them every minute of every day and that there can be a future in science for them. Science-by-Mail is a fun way to jump into science. This program has been supplied to sixteen classrooms. In the past, this is a costly program and has been made possible through a grant for which we applied from the Escape Corporation. They have reached out to help a kid help other kids. We are forever grateful for their trust. In the past we have applied for a matching grant from the Boston Museum of Science. As a feature of this program, each classroom is paired with a working scientist with whom they correspond. Our working scientists have varied from marine biologists to volcanologists to forensic pathologists. We supplement the Science-by-Mail program with books and software donated by the Houghton-Mifflin Corporation.

Sound Investments
When we find a project being done in the Appalachian community that we feel is extremely important we have been known to make monetary donations. We feel that these projects are sound investments that truly represent the mission and goals of Grandmas Gifts. In the past we have made donations to the building of new community parks, the preservation of old parks, and to organizations that provide food and shelter to people experiencing difficult times. To read more about our sound investments see updates in the News section.

Grandmas Gifts Goodies 
This program provides incentives such as magnifying glasses, pencils, stickers, puppets, stick-on earrings, markers, dolls, play dough, cards, coloring books, educational games, matchbox cars, and tons of books to children receiving immunizations at traveling county and city health clinics. This program is done to reinforce positive feelings toward preventative healthcare while putting fun, essential, and educational materials into the hands of kids.

Speak out!
This organization also works to educate youth on making a difference. Since 1996 Emily Douglas has been a speaker on youth service, the benefits of volunteering, Appalachia, education, literacy, and empowerment.
Millions of people have heard Emily speak on the radio and television, read articles in magazines, newspapers online, or speak in person.
For more informaiton about speaking engagements click here!

Pictures from Events & Thank You Letters: Photo Galery