On October 29, 2014, American's Helping American's donated more than $11,000 in goods to Grandma's Gifts. Goods included 192 packages of laundry detergent, 48 new heavy blankets, 78 pairs of shoes, 1,200 books, and 13,920 diapers! These HUGE donations are amazing and allow Grandma's Gifts to help even more people. To distribute these goods we paired up with the Harvest for the Hungry nondenominational food pantry and Symmes Valley Elementary school in Appalachian Ohio. Books and blankets were also used to hand out to children for our holiday program.

American's Helping Americans' mission is to join communities, build and strengthen neighbor relations, and work side by side with residents to address community-wide concerns linking resources supportive of a healthy, safe and economically vibrant standard of living. Their goal is to ease unnecessary and chronic suffering by creating long-term solutions to the problems of hunger, limited education, substandard housing and insufficient medical care. For more information on Americans' Helping Americans visit their website at www.helpingamericans.org

We are especially indebted to American's Helping American's as yearly they help Grandma's Gifts distribute thousands of dollars in goods. We thank them for their continued support. Below is an article that appeared in the Ironton Tribune about the delivery. We also appreciate the Tribune's continued support in sharing good news!

The article and image appeared in the Ironton Tribune on Thursday, October 30, 2014. Photo and Story by Brandon Roberts. Article Link. http://www.irontontribune.com/2014/10/30/harvest-for-the-hungry-gets-large-donation/

On Friday, October 24, 2014, Grandma's Gifts paid for all second graders from Symmes Valley Elementary School to visit the Newport Aquarium in Cincinnati, OH/ Covington, KY. We are fortune to be able to do this type of work and thank our donors for their continued support! 

Below you will find thank you notes from children who attended the aquarium as well as a thank you note from Pam, a teacher at Symmes Valley Elementary School that we have worked with for some time. We love working with teachers like Pam as they not only love their job , but are great at it!

Emily,

Our trip was great! The kids really enjoyed it. They also enjoyed the meal at Ponderosa. Can you believe that I had one student that has never been in a restaurant? I think she was at McDonald's one time.

Thanks, 

Pam

Symmes Valley Elementary School

On Thursday, October 23, 2014, Grandma's Gifts aiding in paying for a group of Maysville High School photography and engineering students to take a trip to Pittsburgh to experience the arts! Below you will see a letter from the teacher that organized the trip as well as photos of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Ducky Tour, First Presbyterian Church, and Carnegie Museum of Art. One of the highlights of the trip were students experience with a revolving doorway... check out the letter below to see what we mean. We were excited to help with such a trip and enjoy supporting the arts. We also LOVE working with and supporting great teachers like Kurt! 


This trip cost Grandma's Gifts $350 (ducky tour) + $420 (Carnegie tickets) = $770. Thank you to our donors for making this trip possible! We look forward to supporting the arts and field trips to support the arts in the future!

Hi Emily,

Wow what a great trip we had yesterday! The trip was really made possible because of you and your family's generosity. The kids were also truly grateful with is sometimes a surprising thing with kids now. Beautiful weather, interested and well behaved kids, great tour guides. I had nothing but great responses!

This was our final agenda:

6:00am Depart: (sharp) in front of the building
9:00am Tour Art Institute of Pittsburgh
10:30am Lunch at Primanti Bros. (Market Square) We ended up having several choices
12:00pm Ducky Tour (Station Square)
1:30pm Up the Incline ($3.50 exact change needed)
2:00pm Walk Pittsburgh/Subway
3:00ish pm First Presbyterian Church (Tiffany Windows)
4:00-4:30 pm Depart for Oakland (Pitt Campus)
4:30-5:00ish Dinner at the “O”.
6:00pm Tour at the Carnegie Museum of Art
7:30ish Depart for home

It was very fun seeing the students experience new things...particularly hilarious was the students' first experience with a revolving doorway...it really is amazing what experiences I sometimes take for granted.  ... I do really appreciate all you did for my students, it was a blessing that would not have happened without you.  Please pass on my thanks to all involved on your end.

If you would like more pictures I can send them to you but the ones that I sent you are very representative of what we did.

Kurt Dreier
Computer Generated Imaging Instructor
Early College High School- Zane State Adjunct 
Maysville High School
Maysville Local School District