Friday, May 10, 2024
GET THE VOTE OUT: Five- year-old Rozlynd Sanders was passing out flyers to encourage community members to go online to kubotahometownproud.com and vote for Rancho Brazos as the favorite community project. The winning project, will receive a $100,000 grant in addition to the grants announced by Kubota on Wednesday.
ALL SMILES: Rancho Brazos Community Center Executive Director Sharla Caro holds a check representing a $100,000 grant from U.S. Kubota Tractor Corporation for improvements at the center.
Rancho Brazos Community Centers received the blessing of a lifetime when it was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from U.S. Kubota Tractor Corporation to revitalize a community project.
Rancho Brazos Community Centers was chosen as one of five winners out of 900 applicants for the grant because of its resilience and unity following the devastating tornado that swept across the community on May 15, 2013.
“It completely decimated an entire Habitat for Humanity community in less than 20 minutes,” Sharla Caro, executive director of Rancho Brazos Community Centers said in a video that was played during a meeting Wednesday morning at the RBCC office. “Six lives were lost that day. Everything was displaced for more than six months.”
“Rancho was the hardest-hit area, but in typical range of fashion, you know, the community came together,” RBCC Board President Jan Neal said.
Rancho Brazos is obtaining financial support from Kubota to develop a three-phase project aimed at incorporating agriculture and expanding the community.
Phase one would involve the planting of a garden, phase two would assist in developing a distribution center and phase three would help in constructing a recreation center.
Kubota will help the organization fund the development and maintenance of a community garden, livestock area and various agricultural projects for the community, with all of the above set to break ground this summer.
“We want to do a community garden,” Neal said. “We could grow some fruits and vegetables, have chickens, rabbits, and so on; it's a source of food. It would also be a kind of unifying community event, so the community can come and help be a part of it, bring their kids and we're implementing agriculture into our program here. Plus, it gives the opportunity for the kids to participate in 4-H.”
The new distribution center, the Douglas Long Outreach Center for Children, will be developed on 4.66 acres of land leased from Hood County for $1 per year for 99 years. That land was already bought for that purpose by Precinct 3 County Commissioner Jack Wilson earlier this spring.
"Right now, all of our food pantry stuff is taking up what the kids should be using for their after-school program, so we have these partitions up now,” Neal said. “We're slowly decreasing the amount of space available for after school because now we have our food pantry, our hygiene products, and now the Tarrant Area Food Bank comes the fourth Thursday of every month, and we can't do the program because we have 30 volunteers and we have an assembly line. We want a distribution center where it stores everything and is properly designed.”
The recreation center would serve as a place where the community can come and participate in activities, sports and host meetings.
COMPETITION HEATS UP
Through Kubota’s Hometown Proud Grant Program, the five recipients of the $100,000 grant are now in competition to receive an additional $100,000 through the Community Choice Award grant.
Every vote cast will be automatically entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a Kubota residential Z200 Series zero-turn mower or BX Series sub-compact tractor. Voters can enter one vote per day, per email address, for more chances to win.
If awarded the additional Community Choice Award grant, Rancho Brazos will be able to enhance its rainwater collection system as well as expand its physical footprint to provide space for teaching local children about gardening, compost, livestock care and sustainable irrigation.
In the spirit of “Together We Do More,” Kubota is calling for the public’s help in selecting a winner for its Community Choice Award grant, which would essentially double the award money for the community project chosen.
From now until July 25 at 11:59 p.m., the community is invited to visit kubotahometownproud.com to cast a vote for one of the top five community projects. The community project with the most votes will be announced as the Community Choice Award winner in August.
Neal said the first $100,000 grant will almost completely financially support the implementation of phase one.
“It’s so humbling,” she said. “We're just little Rancho in Granbury, Texas, but I'm just grateful, because our dream is actually a reality. That was God bringing everything together. It had to be a God moment because I never imagined (that this would happen).”
“I am so excited about the opportunity to one, obtain that land, which we did in April, but now to look at developing it in a way that we can serve not just a small section of Hood County, but all of Hood County and that starts with a community garden,” Caro said. “Through working with the horticulture, plants and learning about the science of it, it's educating our youth.”
ABOUT RANCHO BRAZOS
Established by Acton United Methodist Church to operate the nonprofit, Rancho Brazos Community Centers serves at-promise families throughout the Hood County community.
“We look to focus on the whole family,” Caro said. “It's giving a safe place for the kids to play. It's giving a warm meal. It's just bringing the community together. We have our food distributions, we have our hygiene programs, but really, it's about building relationships and connecting people together.”
For more information and for Kubota Hometown Proud Grant Program official rules, visit kubotahometownproud.com.
