Children’s Education Center Receives Grant From SCGF

provided to The Santiva Chronicle

The Children’s Education Center of the Islands would like to announce a grant of $250,000.00 from the Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation to support the reopening and future resiliency of the island’s only preschool. This grant will be used to make much-needed improvements to our playground area following the impact of Hurricane Ian.

These improvements include additional nature-based playground equipment, resanding the playground to ensure the safety of our students, and the addition of a shade structure to continue to allow our students to enjoy Sanibel’s natural resources even on the hottest Florida days. In addition to improvements to our outdoor space, the grant will be used to improve our only building, Thompson Hall, which survived the storm. This resiliency for the future plan includes upgrading all the windows and doors with hurricane impact options, as well as replacing the original wood siding with hardie board.

These changes will safeguard the school from future storms, allowing it to continue to be an integral institution on the island. In addition to this generous grant, the Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation established a scholarship fund for the school to ensure that all students have access to nature-based early education regardless of income. This scholarship fund is essential to providing childhood education services to families with children ages 2-5 that live or work on the island.

The Children’s Education Center families and Board of Directors express their deepest gratitude for this Resiliency Grant and scholarship fund that will allow the school to reopen on Aug. 14, 2023, welcoming back families for the first time since Hurricane Ian.

About The Children’s Education Center of the Islands
Established in 1974 and preparing to celebrate its 50th year on Sanibel in 2024, The Children’s Education Center is a nature-based preschool that began as a parent co-op at the old Bailey’s General Store location on the bay. The school moved to its current location on Casa Ybel Road in 1980. Our beautiful 5-acre campus remains primarily undeveloped natural land and with the help of the Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation we have the opportunity to reopen and for our children to continue to explore the natural resources of our sanctuary island.

About The Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation
The mission of The Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation is to support nonprofits that positively impact the lives of people in need, living or working on Sanibel or Captiva, and to provide education scholarship grants to Sanctuary employees and their families. The Sanctuary Golf Club Foundation has a long history of supporting Sanibel based non-profit organizations. In addition to current and previous grants awarded to The Children’s Education Center of the Islands, they have also awarded grants to F.I.S.H, Community House Resource (CHR), The Sanibel School, and Golisano Children’s Hospital. They have also established a Sanctuary Employee Emergency Fund to support employees of the Sanctuary Golf Club. Most recently they established partnerships with the Harry Chapin Food Bank.