Community Grants
The Mason G. Smoak Foundation
will assist the community to impact lives.
GRANT
APPLICATION
Applications open annually on August 1 and close on November 1. Non-profit organizations in the Heartland are welcome to apply during the application period.
We are proud supporters of the organizations below.
2023 Community Grant Recipients
Beauty Fit For A Queen
Beauty Fit for a Queen teaches girls and women that true beauty comes from God and a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We will minister to girls and women in schools, churches, and other non-profits. The project is “bless her heart bags” filled with basic hygiene needs, a gospel tract and a handwritten note of encouragement.
Champion for Children Foundation of Highlands County, Inc.
Champion for Children Youth Awards program - The purpose of this annual award is to highlight, thank and celebrate students across Highlands County who exhibit strong character, positive behavior, meaningful impact, and sincere service to others. Children and teens who, even at their young ages, are clearly demonstrating a commitment to help others and positively impact those around them.
Children’s Museum of the Highlands
The Children's Museum of the Highlands hosts a community street festival each October called Pumpkin Patch Festival. In 2022, the festival began a new venture for children called the Children's Business Fair in which children ages 5-18 can create their own business model and sell their products to the community at the festival. In the two years we have hosted this event, our children have blown us away with their imagination and creativity in their business displays. We want to encourage, develop and assist this creativity through a series of free workshops that will teach business skills, money handling, product development and marketing skills.
Ridge Area Arc, Inc.
Project SEARCH was developed at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Since the hospital served individuals with developmental disabilities, it made sense that they should commit to hiring people in this group. Since its inception, Project SEARCH has grown from a single program site to a large and continuously expanding international network of sites. This year the Highlands County School Board, Ridge Area Arc, and Vocational Rehabilitation partnered to bring this program to high school upperclassmen with Individualized education plans from Lake Placid, Sebring and Avon Park. The program makes it possible to train people with developmental disabilities to fill some of the high-turnover, entry-level positions in the hospital.
Worthy & Known Family Project
Making Sense of Your Worth: Throughout the course of our work, we have discovered there is a missing piece to helping individuals heal from the negative, hurtful events they were exposed to throughout their lives. Individuals may have made sense of the events on a cognitive level, and even on an emotional level, but have not yet taken the journey to understand how these life events (both big and small) have impacted their positive self-worth. The classes (2 hours per session for 8 sessions) focus on developing an understanding of the “lies” an individual believes about themselves, such as “I am not good enough,” or “I am not smart enough,” or “I have no patience” and how to replace these lies with truth. In addition, once a participant is released from the beliefs associated with the past, the sessions focus on rebuilding a new life based on positive self-worth as well as how to maintain these gains.
2022 Community Grant Recipients
Ag Angels
Partners with the schools in Highlands and Hardee counties to provide a “Christmas” for less fortunate children. The teachers and staff agree to select and interview the children, put together a list and do the shopping for the children chosen from their school.
Champion for Children Foundation of Highlands County, Inc.
Champion for Children Youth Awards program - The purpose of this annual award is to highlight, thank and celebrate students across Highlands County who exhibit strong character, positive behavior, meaningful impact, and sincere service to others. Children and teens who, even at their young ages, are clearly demonstrating a commitment to help others and positively impact those around them.
Children’s Museum of the Highlands
The Sensory PlayTime Program at the Children’s Museum of the Highlands is a program for children who may find the normal museum environment too overwhelming. Sensory PlayTime is a designated one-hour event for private access to the Museum for registered families of autism needs, high sensory activity needs and related disabilities. It is scheduled monthly and allows families to stay for play throughout the day should they wish.
Heartland Horses Equine Activities & Learning
Currently HHEAL (Heartland Horses Equine Activities and Learning) recruits volunteers from the general public. A scholarship program for new instructors would allow for a volunteer who is interested in leadership to train and become PATH (Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship, Inc.) CTRI (certified therapeutic riding instructors). PATH CTRI's must be mentored by current PATH instructors during the course of their studies as well as attend regional conferences, workshops, and finally testing. PATH CTRI's are required to become well versed in the different diagnoses they might encounter by barn management, horse care, and volunteer coordination. This grant will provide a scholarship for a volunteer to become PATH CTRI certified.
Heritage Association of Highlands County, Inc.
The annual Heritage Festival celebrates the history of Highlands County with live exhibits of history re-enactors, tours of a historic ranch house, pioneer crafts and skills exhibits, artisan crafts, food vendors and professional and local musical entertainment. A feature of the 2023 Festival will be native American pow wow dancers and an authentic Muscogee Creek Indian camp exhibit.
Links 2 Success
College & Career Prep Academy for DeSoto High School students. The goal of the College & Career Prep Academy is to increase the number of Desoto County students who complete high school and pursue and complete a post secondary credential or an industry recognized certificate or degree that leads to a high-wage, high skill, or high-demand career by providing student opportunities through preparatory services. The program will improve and expand learning opportunities so that every graduate is prepared and inspired to successfully and productively pursue any option after high school.
Ridge Area Arc, Inc.
We have not, as yet, asked to look at the world through the lens of an individual with developmental or intellectual disability. How do they view us? How do they see each other? The “Through their lens: A Visual Representation of Person Centered Culture” project seeks to give individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, served by Ridge Area Arc, a digital camera and ask them to shoot photos of anything that intrigues them, upsets them, moves them in their daily lives. The intent of the project is to prompt larger discussions about how we can allow individuals to choose their goals and to redirect our culture in a more person centered approach.
2021 Community Grant Recipients
Ag Angels
Partners with the schools in Highlands and Hardee counties to provide a “Christmas” for less fortunate children. The teachers and staff agree to select and interview the children, put together a list and do the shopping for the children chosen from their schools.
Beauty Fit For a Queen
To teach girls and women that true beauty comes from God and a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We will minister to girls and women in schools, churches, and other non-profits. The project is “bless her heart bags” filled with basic hygiene needs, a gospel tract and a handwritten note of encouragement.
Children’s Museum of the Highlands
The Sensory PlayTime Program at the Children’s Museum of the Highlands is a
program for children who may find the normal museum environment too overwhelming.
Sensory PlayTime is a designated one-hour event for private access to the Museum
for registered families of autism needs, high sensory activity needs
and related disabilities. It is scheduled monthly and allows families to
stay for play throughout the day should they wish
Highway Park Community
Teaching Garden
The Highway Park Teaching & Demonstration Garden is a unique garden education program offered by the Highway Park Neighborhood Council to teach adults/youth how to grow their own food in a fun, supportive, and cooperative learning environment. A lot of free food has been distributed during the pandemic, but what happens when these programs are no longer available or significantly reduced? The Community Teaching Garden will teach families self-sufficiency to help relieve dependency on public programs.
Ridge Area ARC Walk to Good Health
Ridge Area ARC serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities that, many times, are unable to advocate for their own healthcare as they truly do not understand cause and effect. The program will create a walking program with rewards and incentives for reaching “virtual milestones” through walking real miles. Pedometers will track distance walked and celebrations with educational and fun activities will be done at various mile locations. For example, they are walking enough miles to walk to New Orleans, Louisiana. When they reach their final destination, there will be a Mardi Gras party to celebrate that they walked the miles equal to walking to New Orleans.
2020 Community Grant Recipients
Ag Angels
Partners with the schools in Highlands and Hardee counties to provide a “Christmas” for less fortunate children. The teachers and staff agree to select and interview the children, put together a list and do the shopping for the children chosen from their schools.
Beauty Fit For a Queen
To teach girls and women that true beauty comes from God and a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We will minister to girls and women in schools, churches, and other non-profits. The project is “bless her heart bags” filled with basic hygiene needs, a gospel tract and a handwritten note of encouragement.
Children’s Museum of the Highlands
The Children’s Museum of the Highlands is working on adding a new sensory friendly program called “Quiet Paly Time”. Quiet Play Time is designed to provide a safe enjoyable atmosphere for our children who find the normal museum play too overwhelming. This program will be offered at designated and regular times.
Hope Haven Transitional Housing
Hope Haven helps homeless individuals and families to re-enter the community with strength and confidence, by providing shelter, employment, direction and hope. Hope Haven is developing a neighborhood of tiny homes and would like to secure it with fencing around the property.
Link2Success
Working to ensure that youth in Desoto County graduate with the education and life skills needed to access post-secondary educational opportunities..
Idols Aside Ministries - Sons Without Fathers
We at IAM hope to alleviate the growing fatherless epidemic in our country through our Sons Without Fathers program. SWOF is a faith-based program where we invite at-risk fatherless youth to attend sporting and outdoor events like, fishing/hunting retreats and nights or worship, multiple times a month at the IAM Ranch in Lake Wales, FL and partner properties through out Central Florida (Polk, Highlands and Hardee).
Ridge Area ARC
Ridge Area ARC is responding to a local need to implement additional programming and retrofit their facility in order to address the growing number of clients they service on the Autism spectrum in our community.
2019 Community Grant Recipients
Ag Angels
Partners with the schools in Highlands and Hardee counties to provide a “Christmas” for less fortunate children. The teachers and staff agree to select and interview the children, put together a list and do the shopping for the children chosen from their schools.
Beauty Fit For a Queen
To teach girls and women that true beauty comes from God and a growing relationship with Jesus Christ. We will minister to girls and women in schools, churches, and other non-profits. The project is “bless her heart bags” filled with basic hygiene needs, a gospel tract and a handwritten note of encouragement.
Links2Success
Working to ensure that youth in Desoto County graduate with the education and life skills needed to access post-secondary educational opportunities..
Idols Aside Ministries - Sons Without Fathers
We at IAM hope to alleviate the growing fatherless epidemic in our country through our Sons Without Fathers program. SWOF is a faith-based program where we invite at-risk fatherless youth to attend sporting and outdoor events like, fishing/hunting retreats and nights or worship, multiple times a month at the IAM Ranch in Lake Wales, FL and partner properties through out Central Florida (Polk, Highlands and Hardee).
Kidz First, Inc.
Kidz First is committed to helping students in Lake Placid by supplying them new
backpack, school supplies, socks and toothbrush kits at the beginning of each
school year.
2018 Community Grant Recipients
Links2success
Working to ensure that youth in Desoto County graduate with the education and life skills needed to access post-secondary educational opportunities.
Ag Angels
Partners with the schools in Highlands and Hardee counties to provide a “Christmas” for less fortunate children. The teachers and staff agree to select and interview the children, put together a list and do the shopping for the children chosen from their schools.
Toby the Clown Foundation
The gift shop is in need of a facelift and replacing the carpet will help make it
cheerier and safer place.
Highlands Children’s Museum
As part of The Children’s Museum of the Highlands educational mission, we are excited to announce our goal of a new STEAM program. The program offers a series of classes for 6-9 year-olds. The lessons will put the laws of physics, dynamics, electricity, coding, math, science, art, and more right into the hands of the curious young learner.
Ridge Area ARC
The agency is seeking assistance to install whole house generators in order to
be proactive in the event of a natural disaster by being able to designate several
of their group homes as shelters for all the persons in the community that the
organization serves (both group home consumers and community living
consumers) in order to provide safe shelter when needed.
SHS Band Boosters Association
The Association requested help in the repairing & replacement of instruments for the RGB (Red Green Blue) Band season in which students from all three Highlands
County schools are invited to participate in.
Avon Elementary School
“Our Family Book” is a project that will use literacy to strengthen our school community.
Project funds will allow us to purchase “Brambleheart” for every child, teacher and support staff on our campus to read together.
Highlands County Youth For Christ
YFC requested help purchasing a new program to be used at the New Teen
Center. The Financial Literacy Program is designed to help teach students how
to budget, save and spend money using a virtual token economics system.
In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.
Isaiah 61:3