A sign of the approaching fall season will hit the Jacksonville area in two weeks.
The Prairieland United Way’s Live United Week returns on Monday, August, 30th. Executive Director, Karen Walker says the week is full of activities and events aimed at allowing residents to help give back to their community.
On Monday, August 30th, individuals and businesses are invited to show their support by requesting a LIVE UNITED sign for their yards. You can call 217-245-4557 to request a sign to be brought to your location.
Walker says Tuesday of Live United Week exemplifies this year’s campaign theme as they look for volunteers to “Be Someone’s Hero”.
“We are actually doing a day of action. We have a number of our agencies that are in need of some volunteer projects. The past year with the pandemic, we weren’t really able to do a lot of work as volunteers. So this is a way for us to get together partners, people who would like to help. Anything from painting to landscaping to just some general cleaning at various agencies in Jacksonville.
So we are asking anyone that is interested to sign up. We have them split up into hour and a half blocks so no one has to come in a full day. Anytime you could give would be great. You could do multiple projects or you can just pick one that sounds good to you and we all appreciate any help we can get.”
Wednesday, Sept. 1 CNB Bank and Trust is hosting a Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 am to 2 pm. Donors need to pre-register at www.redcrossblood.org. Limited spaces are available. Papa Murphy’s is donating 20% of all sales to our annual campaign for Dine and Donate on this day from 10 am to 8 pm.
Thursday, Sept. 2 is the annual Corporate Campaign Kickoff and After Hours event at the Morgan County Fairgrounds, and Friday, Sept. 3 the United Way is highlighting the 2021 campaign theme on t-shirts and asking the community to support the campaign and wear their shirt proudly.
Shirts are available for a $20 donation. Go to www.prairielandunitedway.org to place your order.
Walker says she is hopeful that this year’s campaign will look closer to normal than last year when all in-person events were canceled due to the pandemic. She says not being able to do the in-person employee campaigns hurt them in reaching last year’s goal, and this year they are aiming higher yet.
“Our goal for the campaign this year is $460,000, so it is more than we raised last year. But we know that the need in the area is great, and so we wanted to go ahead and push ourselves. We know that we need to find the support. We want to make sure we can help as many people as possible through our efforts.”
Walker says for now the plan is to have in-person events as much as possible if allowed, which will include the return of the Price is United game show, dinner fundraiser. She says the event is still in the planning stages, however, more information will be available soon.