CHURUBUSCO — Local bank employees recently donated $3,000 to the Churubusco Child Care Center.
PNC Bank employees raised the money by volunteering at the child care center throughout the year.
Churubusco Child Care Center has received a $3,000 PNC Grow Up Great donation from the local PNC Bank branch. From left are day care director, Michelle Hecht, holding Caroline, child care board member, Sarah Hughes, holding Grace and Cookie Monster, day care assistant director, Margie Herron, holding Klaussen, and Taylor, Icellee, Silas, Vada, Alex and Harrison. In back, at right, are Melissa Tigner, teller supervisor at PNC and Kevin Rothgeb, assistant vice president and branch manager at the Churubusco PNC branch.
Over the last five years, the Churubusco PNC bank branch has worked with the Churubusco Community Child Care Center to participate in the bank’s Grow Up Great: Grants for Great Hours Program and has donated $18,000 to the center, said Kevin Rothgeb, assistant vice president and branch manager at the Churubusco PNC branch.
PNC Grow Up Great program is a $350 million, multi-year, bilingual initiative that began in 2004 to help prepare children from birth up to age 5 for success in school and life. The program has served millions of children.
The grant is awarded to a qualified Head Start day care center such as Churubusco Child Care Center after a PNC team has completed 100 hours of volunteer time to the center within a year. Employees are eligible for paid time off to volunteer and can earn individual and team volunteer grants for their efforts.
The Grow Up Great program matches the number of volunteer hours with dollars.
In addition to Rothgeb, other members of the Churubusco PNC Bank team include Melissa Tigner, Deb Frazier, Shari May, Pam Pequignot, Josh Taylor and Travis Gaar.
This past year PNC employees assisted the teachers with classroom duties and projects, helped with the children, worked on building maintenance and repairs and held drives for books, hats, gloves, scarves and cleaning and sanitation supplies.
Since its inception, PNC Grow Up Great has distributed more than $90 million in grants and worked with partners like Sesame Workshop to develop rich educational materials — like the new, free bilingual “Words Are Here, There, and Everywhere” adventure cards — for children, families and educators.
PNC employees have volunteered more than 485,000 hours and counting, and the program has served approximately 2.3 million children throughout 19 states and the District of Columbia.
To help direct the initiative, PNC Grow Up Great has partnered with some of the nation’s most highly respected early childhood experts and nonprofit organizations to establish school readiness programs in math, science, the arts and financial education.
By: Vivian Sade
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