Members rounding up cents for the community

By Ali Brown, ProAct Shakopee Senior Program Manager

For more than 20 years, the Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative (MVEC) has been more than generous with granting our program’s many “Round Up” submissions. These grants have supported many community class outings, cooking class supplies, sensory items, board games, art supplies, smart TV’s, garden tools, and most recently, our basketball hoops.

All the items purchased have enhanced our participants’ experiences, alleviated their sensory needs and now they’ll have a basketball court with actual in-ground hoops. This will also allow ProAct to partner with Southwest Metro to create a court for the entire building community to use.

Round Up comes along every three months. After submission, the MVEC Board of Directors reviews them all, calling to discuss the items requested and chat about our program. Each member who has called has been supportive and thanked our staff for their service. A member recently stopped and toured our new Dean Lakes site, impressed with the participants, staff and space.

We cannot really put a price on the total dollars donated by the MVEC Round Up program over the years, but we can say it is priceless to the participants and staff members of ProAct and its predecessor, New Options. Because of their Board of Directors and sense of community we cannot thank them enough for their gracious support.