CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In a time when children seem to be more vulnerable than ever, President of the Ball Toyota Family of Dealerships, Shawn Ball says he couldn’t be happier to be giving more money to support schools and universities in the state providing essential needs for their students.
Friday the dealership rounded up several dignitaries throughout the community and state at their Ball Toyota Event Center in Charleston to announce they would be donating over $650,000 to assist in providing essential items to students such as food, clothing, and hygiene products.
Ball Toyota has been partnering with the United Way, the West Virginia Department of Education, Communities In Schools, Marshall University and several other organizations to conduct the initiative in establishing “virtual pantries” dispersing the items to 248 schools across the state.
Shawn Ball told MetroNews that it feels great to be able to provide the funds and witness the difference it’s making throughout schools in meeting kids essential needs.
“We see a problem and we try to solve it and that’s what we’re doing,” Ball said. “We’ve done a lot of research over the years and this is kind of where we’ve come to, we feel like our money goes directly to the kids that need it, there’s really no middle-man, this money goes straight to the schools.”
The Ball Toyota Family of Dealerships includes Ball Toyota of Charleston, L&S Toyota of Beckley, and Advantage Toyota of Barboursville. The Ball family has been making these kinds of donations to schools throughout the three areas they serve for around 15 years now.
The schools in the company’s three service areas each receive a $1,500 check from Ball Toyota toward the pantries they have established within their school.
Ball said while they still have a physical pantry set up at many schools, the virtual pantries work really well in the sense that if a child needs a certain shoe size, for instance, that the pantry doesn’t have, they are able to order shoes in the size the child needs.
“That’s where the virtual part comes in, you order it, you do whatever you have to do to get that child that shoe, versus, “I’ve got a whole stack of shoes here I hope one of them works for you,” so it’s kind of a more efficient way to do a pantry,” Ball said.
In addition to the $650,000 donation made Friday for this effort, Ball Toyota also presented Marshall University with a $250,000 donation toward its Kinesiology Department.
Marshall President Brad Smith was one of the dignitaries in attendance at Friday afternoon’s event.
“What you have done and continue to do for generations of students is phenomenal,” Smith said addressing Ball Toyota’s donations. “You are truly shaping and inspiring lives, and enabling them to do more than they ever thought possible.”
Ball said Communities In Schools, the statewide organization First Lady Kathy Justice has helped establish and support that keeps students on the path to graduating has really done a lot to help support their program, as CIS works with kids in the schools in need on a first-hand basis.
Kathy Justice said at Friday’s event nothing is impossible for these kids when given the little bit of extra support they need.
Kathy Justice
“We want to tell these kids in the state that they can do anything in life that they want to do, they can be whatever they want to be,” she said. “Don’t let someone tell you just because you’re from Richwood, West Virginia that you can’t be a lawyer, that you can’t go to Washington, that isn’t true.”
Recently, Ball Toyota has also donated $40,000 to the three United Ways in their service areas, as well as given $10,000 to West Virginia Technical College for a discretionary fund for underprivileged students.
West Virginia Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Patrick Morrisey was also at Friday’s donation event. He said this is the thing West Virginians are notable for most of all– helping one another.
“That’s the kind of spirit West Virginians are known for, we’re very hardy people, we may not be as rich as other states, but we’re going to give people the shirt off our backs in order to help them advance,” Morrisey said.
Ball said that educators shouldn’t have to take money out of their own pockets to support the kids they care about when they see them struggling.
“I mean, we need to have funds available for these teachers when they need it, they know the best things for their students, they know when there’s a need, they’re boots on the ground, so who do they tell?” Well, now they can tell us,” said Ball.
Ball said after doing this for around 15 years now, each year they seem to accumulate more and more money for the cause.