POUGHKEEPSIE – Oakwood students were thrilled to receive a $1000 grant from the Poughkeepsie chapter of The Awesome Foundation for their collaborative community fridge project. Together with their partner Community Matters 2. Inc. a group of students and faculty gratefully accepted the donation that will be used to purchase groceries to support food insecure community members in Poughkeepsie.
The Poughkeepsie Community Fridge project was founded in 2022 by Oakwood students who have raised over $10,000 through grants and their Go Fund Me page to support their neighbors in need. Community Matters 2, Inc. founder L’Quette Taylor expressed his enthusiasm for the joint project, “We’re proud to partner with Oakwood Friends School in making a real difference for our community. Thanks to the incredible Awesome Poughkeepsie grant, our community fridge initiative is growing stronger, bringing access, dignity and nourishment to neighbors who need it most. This is what collaboration looks like.”
Awesome Poughkeepise is a volunteer-run group that provides monthly $1,000 grants to projects that directly impact the City of Poughkeepsie or its residents, especially those that forge new collaborations or partnerships. They evaluate projects for social impact, benefit to the public, ability to successfully execute, level of collaboration, and originality in ideas. Oakwood senior Sam Nye who applied for and received the grant on behalf of the Oakwood students who run the community fridge shared, “Working with our faculty advisors and my fellow classmates has been an incredible experience. We’ve put a lot of effort into connecting the fridge with local organizations and securing support, and we’re so grateful to the Poughkeepsie Awesome Foundation for helping us expand this project.”
