Giving Back: Capital Blue Cross, Pennsylvania American Water and more

Mechanicsburg-based Pennsylvania American Water donated $19,470 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership. This spring, the company committed to donating $10 for every customer who switched from paper to electronic bills during April, enough to underwrite the cost of planting one tree. The campaign led to 1,947 customer conversions to paperless billing.

The Society for Marketing Professional Services Central PA Chapter presented a $7,000 check to The Children’s Miracle Network on July 26. The money was raised from the chapter’s 2022 golf outing at Regents’ Glen Country Club in York, which had the highest number of participants in its history.

Main Street Gettysburg announced the next step in the $1.4 million Gettysburg Welcome Center project, a $12,000 grant from the Robert C. Hoffman Charitable Trust Grant that will be used for professional architecture and design services. The building site at 340 Baltimore St., in the heart of historic Gettysburg, was donated to the borough for the purpose of creating a downtown welcome center.

The Rotary Veterans Initiative, Penn State Harrisburg and Douglas W. Pollock Center for Addiction Outreach and Research are collaborating to help military veterans transform their lives, support their families, strengthen communities, and address the complex societal problem of addiction. On Aug. 4, a project of The Foundation for Enhancing Communities will present $25,000 to Penn State Harrisburg, to support veterans’ scholarships, textbook vouchers and stipends for student veterans performing Pollock Center unpaid internships.

Capital Blue Cross staff recently celebrated the health insurer’s contribution to Susquehanna Service Dogs in support of the construction of the program’s new assistance-dog training facility in Grantville. The gift to the newly opened Robin C. Reedy Training Center helped provide a state-of-the-art facility that readies dogs to make a difference for thousands with disabilities, as well as for veterans, schools, hospitals, courthouses and cancer centers.

(Photo caption: Capital Blue Cross Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility Susan Hubley, Community Relations Coordinator Courtney Levengood and Senior Community Relations Consultant Breann Snyder are shown with service dog Malcolm.)

The Society for Science has awarded a $4,000 STEM Action Grant to the community-based STEM organization Pennsylvania Society for Biomedical Research in Camp Hill. The society, which offers educational programs to promote a better understanding of biomedical research and its contributions to human and animal health, will apply the grant toward the expansion of its SPARC (Science Program and Research Coach) program at Esperanza Academy Charter School in Philadelphia, which will provide around 30 underserved middle school students with intensive, hands-on biomedical science programming.

The York County Community Foundation bestowed three grants to support land and water preservation and downtown revitalization efforts.

They are:

• $60,000 from the foundation’s Agriculture and Land Preservation Program Fund to the Farm and Natural Lands Trust. This will support the hiring of a full-time land stewardship manager.
• $71,595 from foundation’s Codorus Watershed Program Fund to the Watershed Alliance of York for a West Branch Codorus Creek Ecological Restoration Study. This will support the creation of an assessment of two degraded reaches of the West Branch and provide needed data.
• $20,000 to the Y Community Development Corp. for the South Penn Street Physical Vision Plan. This will support engagement and revitalization efforts for the South Penn Street community.

Compiled by Paula Wolf