Kernodle Center names grant recipients

Senior political science major Elizabeth Duffield and junior English literature major Jenna McNair each received $1,000 grants to assist in their respective projects.

Duffield, 21, has designed a health and wellness enrichment program with the Boys and Girls Club of Alamance County.  Her mission, she writes in the grant application, is to “bring education, resources and activities to the Club in order to combat childhood obesity and promote the practice of healthy lifestyles.”   

In cooperation with Boys and Girls Club, the Plano, Texas, native will make presentations on nutrition, stress management and exercise to children in the program.  The grant from the Kernodle Center will go toward the purchase of recreation equipment like jump ropes and exercise balls.

McNair, 20, of Memphis, Tenn., hopes to complete a handicapped-accessible greenhouse at the Kopper Top Life Learning Center to assist a horticulture therapy program.  Kopper Top, a nonprofit organization in Liberty, N.C., that provides animal and horticultural therapy for people with disabilities and hardships, has a partial greenhouse built, and the additional funding for materials would help finish the project.  

This is the first year Student Initiative Grants have been awarded by the Kernodle Center. Grants were made possible by Morgan Creek Capitol Management, the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Class of 2008.   

Both student projects have been submitted for grant consideration by the Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur program. Sponsored by the The Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation, CASE grants provide $1,000 for project proposals that represent “the most innovative and promising ways to serve the community,” according to the foundation web site.