Southwire supports community projects with manpower and money
Every year Southwire has a special budget allocated for donating monies in Hancock and surrounding counties. These donations are specifically marked for helping out communities in different ways. “We call it giving back,” said Donnie Sanders, Operational Support Manager of Southwire. “One of my responsibilities as our giving back coordinator, which I oversee, is Project Gift.”
Earlier this year Southwire was notified by corporate headquarters in Carrollton, Georgia that they would be receiving additional funds allocated specifically for food donation, and there was urgency to place the funds.
Sanders quickly reached out to Judge/Executive, Chic Roberts, to find out where the county might need help.
Judge/Executive Roberts explained that the Hancock’s Senior Services were delivering daily meals to seniors and how those needs had grown exponentially since the Covid pandemic. Senior Services meal cost is covered through local, state and federal money and any additional costs incurred falls on the county to offset the cost.
“Long story short, we were able to take $6,500 of that fund and allocate it to the Hancock Senior Services and another equal amount to a homeless shelter in the Owensboro area,” he said. Both donations were above and beyond Southwire’s normal giving back budget.
Lona Morton, Director of Hancock County Senior Services said the generous donation they received from Southwire had greatly helped with added expenditures in their meal program.
“Pre-Covid we were serving 21 home delivered meals daily, but over the last 16 months we have averaged 52 home delivered meals daily,” said Morton “Pre-pandemic it cost us an average of $8.40 a day to package the number of meals we were serving; now we spend an average of $22.80 a day for our home delivered meals. Also due to the pandemic they have been packaging the meals that are picked up at the Hawesville and Lewisport Senior Centers, and that cost is an average of $10.20 a day, making the extra cost the county has to cover at about $33.00 extra a day.
During the pandemic, Hancock County’s Senior Services were not able to have in-person activities, so they sent home seasonal worksheets and activities packets which increased the amount of paper and ink they normally use. “We sent uplifting messages in different ways; usually candy,” said Morton. “Southwire’s donations to our programs not only helped nourish our seniors, it kept their minds active and lifted their spirits.”
Help for schools
Local school systems are also a sweet spot for Southwire donations. They purchased roughly $10,000 worth of school supplies this year; also above and beyond their normal donation. That money went to providing special school supply packets to prepare each student for the school year.
“We’re also planning some new projects,” Sanders said. “Once we’re able to get back to normal; we’re planning some projects like going to Jeffrey’s Cliffs and helping them with some of their trail maintenance and things like that.”
How it all started
Their giving back program started back when Katrina hit New Orleans. “This is how Project Gift started, as a whole,” said Sanders. “It was a group from corporate that went down there and out of that, they wanted to do something to help. They got a group of employees and gathered supplies,” he said. Southwire donated money to buy supplies and went down with semi loads of water and some other necessities to give out to people. Out of that came inspiration for Project Gift.
All of the Southwire Corporation sites across the country are involved with Project Gift. “Each one of us has our own giving back budget and we like to take that money and donate where possible, and do some hands-on stuff as much as possible,” said Sanders. “We not only give money but we also go out into the community to help to clean up. We do roadside cleanup, river cleanup, we go to homeless shelters and our employees volunteer to serve food.”
“We also do a lot with lean manufacturing in our facility that is around reorganizing things, where it’s easiest to work most efficient… cleaning things up and organizing,” he said.
Southwire has spent roughly the last five years helping the Pitino Shelter; a food kitchen and a homeless shelter in Owensboro. “They had a lot of food that was way outdated and they really had no organization structure on how… like first in, first out,” said Sanders.
“We cleaned out their big walk-in freezers, got rid of all the stuff that was way out of date, reorganized it in such a way that they could have a first in, first out.” “You put pork here, you put chicken here, you put beef here and you put other frozen foods here. Just a place for everything, and clearly labeled it so they could keep up.”
Sanders said outside of the past year with the epidemic, they usually go in there once every quarter just to make sure they’re keeping up. “They work strictly off volunteers,” said Sanders.
Other organizations Southwire is supporting include; Head Start- Audubon Area Community Services, where they recently cleaned and upgraded the pre-school playground. Additionally they support the Crossroads Women’s Shelter; an emergency shelter for women and children. Crossroads also distributes food to low income people in that area.
Much like the hands-on help Southwire provides many of these organizations, they hope to start providing this kind of assistance with senior services.
“Maybe if there’s some folks that need a little work done or something we can help clean up, that kind of stuff, we look forward to get that started with the senior services and enjoy being able to help here locally in the county,” said Sanders. “Of course people have their jobs here to do, too. Our people sacrifice a lot to be able to help. We’re proud of our people in that way.”
By Linda Dillon
