,In 1991, I lost my Appalachian-Ohio grandmother, to breast cancer. I was only nine when she passed. My grandma grew up very poor in southern Ohio and taught my siblings and I the important lesson specific to giving and why we should not judge others who we see as different than us. With these lessons in mind, in 1993 at the age of eleven, I founded the nonprofit organization 'Grandma's Gifts.' This organization is volunteer-run allowing all donations to go to helping children, veterans, and the elderly, as well as transporting goods and maintain our website. Yearly we take children in need on field trips to zoos and museums, purchase holiday gifts, provide food and book bags, and more! To date, because of people like YOU, more than $13 million in goods and services have been donated and $0 have been paid in compensation to individuals to run the organization. We may be a small, local-nonprofit, but our hearts are mighty!

Every Christmas we work with school counselors and nurses in Appalachia to identify children from working families, in extreme need. These are kids who live in Ohio and go home on the weekends not knowing if they will have food to eat... these are children who ask for necessities, like shampoo, blankets, and pillows over video games and computers from Santa. This year we have 49 children who are in looking for an angel for the holidays. If you would like to make a difference by 'adopting' and shopping for one of these children we would greatly appreciate it! Typically people spend $90-$140 per child and take their kids along to shop for a child in need, sharing them the importance of giving and empathy. 

Teaching our children the importance lessons of giving and one way that this can be done is by getting them involved in volunteering early! This year, we will be taking our little boy, Elliot (9 months old), to shop and drop off holiday gifts to families in need. While he may be too little at this point, this will be a new family tradition!

You can find more information on how to give for the 2016 holiday season here!

On December 5, 2014, volunteer Teresa Daulong, nominated Grandma's Gifts founder and 21 year Executive Director, Emily Douglas-McNab for the Eagle Rare Life Award.

Between now and January 6, 2015 at 11:59pm PT, we ask that you vote daily for Emily from every device you own! Emily leads a rare life in volunteering for over 21 years to make the bring together donors and donee's in Eagle Rare's backyard, Appalachia. With enough votes Grandma's Gifts could received $5,000 or $50,000! Just image how much good work can be done with $5,000, let alone $50,000!  


VOTE HERE: http://www.eaglerarelife.com/content/emily-douglas-mcnab 

Thank you to everyone who donated food items for Thanksgiving! We were excited to be able to deliver these goods. More than $1500 in canned goods, fresh vegetables, and frozen turkeys were donated!

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

While not directly related to the work of Grandma's Gifts, here is an article on the work Emily does for the organization Battelle for Kids... with an awesome school district and its teachers in Appalachian Tennessee! 

On Education Week: District Teachers Take Leading Role in Policy Overhaul

Grandma's Gifts Founder Emily Douglas was fortunate enough to make the pages of the Miami University Summer 2014 issue of the Miamian. The article features Geena Davis (see her picture below!) and the Women's Leadership Summit that occurred in April. At this event Emily sat on a panel with three other awesome and inspiring women and spoke about women in leadership as well as the importance of service (see Emily on the right in the second picture!). We suggest you check out page 30 & 31 in the article "If You See It, You Can Be It!" It's pretty empowering... at least we think so!

Today, staff at Battelle for Kids signed about 100 'thank you' cards provided by Grandma's Gifts that will be sent to the VA Hospital in Chillicothe, Ohio (Appalachia). Thank you BFK staff! The cards were put in the mail on July 1 and are to be delivered on July 2!

(Image: Melanie Wightman, Army mother of Captain Jeff Wightman, a two-time deployed (Iraq & Afghanastan) USA and now USA-Reserve, signing 'thank you' cards for Grandma's Gifts!)

Today we made it possible for 12 children to attend the Ohio University Southern Campus Academy of Excellence! We did this by providing $600 for 12 partial scholarships for this two-week long camp for talented and gifted children in south Ohio (Appalachia). To quality for assistance children must apply and their school must verify that they are both "gifted" as well as part of the Federal Free & Reduced Lunch Program.

At Grandma's Gifts we LOVE the Academy of Excellence for a variety of reasons, but here are a few:

• Classes are taught by talented teachers or regional experts who have a love of learning and want to continue their craft during the summer months!
  
• The camp is sponsored by the Ohio University Southern Campus which means their University experts are part of the planning and organizing!
• Classes are available for grades 1 through 6 and go through two full weeks!
  
• While we think of "summer camp" as crafts and camping, this is a bit different -- the Academy of Excellence allows talent and gifted children the ability to continue their learning throughout the summer on topics like science, math, history and culture, art, creative writing, clothing design, computers and technology, health, and even self-esteem! (WE LOVE THAT PART!!!)
  
• We are able to provide scholarships so children who wanted to attend but were afraid they would not be able to, can!
  

We suggest  you learn more about the Academy of Excellence here. If you like what you read then help us provide more scholarships this year by donating today!

Today four, five, six, and seven year old children as well as high school age volunteers signed over 100 'thank you' cards to the VA Hospital in Chillicothe, Ohio (Appalachian Ohio)! The children signed the cards after hearing Emily speak at the Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church Vacation Bible School in Powell, Ohio on how anyone, any age can make a difference!

Today we were able to donate $300 in veterinary services to a southern Ohio Appalachian Pound for two very, very sick puppies to save their lives. We are honored to be able to assist in this way! Thank you donors for supporting this very specific work!

Today we received a donation check for $36.57 from Kroger as a result of everyone who supports Grandma's Gifts as a part of the Kroger Rewards program. For this we are thankful to Kroger and our donors for any and ALL donations!

If you shop at Kroger and are part of Kroger Community Rewards, you can sign-up to help Grandma's Gifts every time you shop (for free)! Learn more here!

A BIG thank you to the Worthington Kilbourne High School students and staff as well as Ohio Department of Agriculture staff and interns who signed over 200 thank you cards provided by Grandma's Gifts for veterans at the Chillicothe, Ohio VA Hospital!

Today, Grandam's Gifts Founder Emily Douglas was the keynote speaker at the Worthington Kilbourne High School Socratic Society Induction. After a wonderful opening speech by Assistant Principal, Kevin Johnson, and piano performance, medals were then presented to new Socratic inductees. Emily then spoke for 25 minutes on the topic of leadership, volunteerism, self-esteem, and the importance of 'being different' to about 150 students and their parents.

After receiving a special request today we donated 95 books bags to an Appalachian Ohio high school to be given to homeless high school students and those in serious need. (Yes, we said homeless.) While we receive these requests frequently, we are always humbled and reminded of the serious need in Appalachia as well as the hardship that some youth face daily.

We also donated a few boxes of hygiene supplies (individual, hotel soap, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and mouthwash) to go along with the bags. We know that they will be used by those who need them.

Thank you to the donors that made this possible and for helping the youth of our country.

Trick-or-Teeth! has expanded dramatically and is one of our largest yearly projects. Originally we collect goods throughout September and October, now we collect goods year round! While the project only started in 2007, from 2007 to June 2014, more than $242,000 in dental hygiene items had been provided to Appalachian City/County health departments; schools; food pantries; free dental clinics; battered women's shelters; nonprofits that serve the community; and Sheriffs/Officers who are in touch with their community that currently work to distribute goods to people in need!

This year we have already received more than $45,000 in dental hygiene supplies (about 30,000 pieces) from local middle schoolers! (HOW AWESOME!) We then donated the supplies to 19 school districts in Appalachian Ohio, ensuring every first grader had a toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss to take home for the summer break. With careful planning and scheduling our shipping and transportation costs were minimal!

Thank you donors! Thank you volunteers! Without you our work would not be possible!

For one of our yearly projects, Seeds for Success, we decided to again work with the small Appalachian town of Myra, Kentucky. Rather than donate canned goods which only last for a short period of time, the organization we work with has a community garden to feed those in need. This organization also then provides seeds to families for their own gardens. We like this as we believe that encouraging people to plant their own gardens helps families learn about sustainable food sources, helps family cut costs, as well raises awareness about healthy eating.

For $204 (this included 2-day shipping -HOW GREAT) we purchased the following seeds from a neat company we have never purchased from before, Johnnys Seeds. We suggest you check out their great selection and prices on seeds and materials from right here in the USA!

Thank you to one of my teachers from middle school for making the donation that made this possible!