Crisis Center Fundraiser Has Local Connection

By Benjamin Cox on December 10, 2019 at 1:03pm

WLDS News reported about the Women’s Crisis Center benefiting from sign-ups at the local Cricket Wireless store during the month of December until Christmas Eve. The store is donating $10 from every new service activation to the Crisis Center Foundation of Jacksonville. The impetus of that donation comes from the store’s former manager who now has moved up to the District Manager of Cricket Wireless, Taylor Murphy. Murphy began at the Jacksonville store back in July 2015, and has worked her way up in the company.

“When I actually started at Cricket Wireless, I actually lived at the Crisis Center,” Murphy explained, “They helped me get an apartment. They helped me with gas cards to get back and forth to work. I built my way up to District Manager. At this point last year around Christmas, I told Dona [Leanard] that I was in a really good place right now and that I was in a position to give back. She said that the women of the center needed personal health and hygiene items.”

Murphy said that she ran the idea of a fundraiser through her corporate offices last year and it’s now become something the company wants to do annually. “I suggested the idea to Courtney Sexton, our corporate representative for Cricket Wireless,” Murphy said. “He said that we could probably do something else and make it bigger. It rolled into this huge thing where we provided Christmas for 43 children. It wasn’t just 1 or 2 gifts. They got several gifts. We gave them lunch, decorated cookies, and we did end up donating $2200 to the Crisis Center from Freedom Wireless. It’s been a springboard into something that we would like to do annually.”

Murphy says she can’t speak to what the company will do for the event in the upcoming years. She’s excited that the event has grown. The AMVETS Post 100 in Jacksonville has donated their banquet hall this year, moving it from the First Christian Church in South Jacksonville for the party in which gifts and items will be given away.

The party is for clients only, but if you would like to make a donation to the Crisis Center Foundation, but are not in the market to change cell service providers at this time, you call call the center at 217-243-4357 to find out how to pledge a monetary donation to the center.

Murphy says she’s paying the crisis center back for helping her get through her own situation: “I always promised to myself that because of everything the ladies did there for me that I was going to give back to them as soon as I was able to do so.”

You can also arrange to make a donation to the center directly by going to the Crisis Center Foundation Facebook page.