Community Update - Mar 2025
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
The new year is upon us again and which means another year of putting Jasper County First (JC First)! Last year, we were able to serve 146 Easter meals to the community with all supplies for the meal purchased from Jasper County businesses. This includes all the food, cutlery, to go boxes andvolunteers who made it happen. That’s 26 more meals than the previous year!
Our Back to School Bash was also a big success with 84 pairs of shoes (five more than last year), 99 sweatshirts (27 more than last year), and 43 haircuts with lice checks (13 more than last year) given away to the community at no cost to the recipients. Once again, we worked with Jasper County businesses to provide the shoes and sweatshirts to keep business local. In addition to these items, we were able to give away new socks and underwear as well. We are excited continue offering new socks and underwear as part of our 2025 Back to School Bash later this year. We also had the privilege to have members of Newton Christian Church serve alongside us—providing personal care cinch bags for every child at the event. The remaining bags were donated to our schools to be distributed throughout the year by school administrators and staff.
2024 brought some other exciting news for the team at JC First. We are incredibly excited and honor to announce that we were not only nominated by the Jasper County Chamber for Non-Profit of the Year, but we won! It is always an honor to serve this great community of ours. While the meals, shoes, sweatshirts, haircuts, lice checks, socks and underwear are free to the community, they do come at a cost. Fortunately, we partner with many local businesses that donate their products or offer discounts. Each year, the Easter Luncheon costs around $1,000, while the Back to School Bash costs nearly eleven times that—about $11,000. As our reach grows, so do our expenses. You may be used to us reaching out for donations before these big events, but we are asking you consider making JC First a part of your monthly giving, if you are able. Ongoing support will not only help us sustain the Easter Luncheon and Back to School Bash but also allow us to expand and consider new community projects.
Our financial need is great, but we also need you! That’s right—we need the Jasper County Community to join us! We need your ideas for the next JC First project. We need your expertise to help make that next initiative a success. Please consider joining the JC First team in supporting and building up Jasper County, Illinois! Our next meeting will be on March 4, 2025, at 6:30 pm at Scott Ave Christian Church. We would love to see you there!
As always, if you have questions, or would like a JC First team member to visit your organization to share more about our mission and how you can get involved, help become a part of JC First, please contact us on Messenger (@jcfirstnewton), email (contact@jcfirst.org), or call (765-820-5247).
We look forward to hearing from you and working together to Serve Jasper County!
Blessings,
JC First Leadership Team
