MILVERTON – The Optimist Club of Mornington has been awarded a grant of $40,000 to support the Milverton All Wheels Park Project. This represents the largest single grant in the program’s history.
The purpose of the Milverton All Wheels Park Project is to build an all wheels park at the Perth East Recreation Complex that anyone in the community can use, anytime, at no charge to enjoy their bikes, scooters and skateboards, even inline skates or roller skates. Not only will the park provide opportunities for fun, physical, outdoor activity, but it will promote kids’ mental health by giving them a place to gather and create a sense of community.
This grant is part of The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group’s new L.E.A.F. (Learning Engagement & Accelerator Fund) initiative. The company invited community groups from across eastern, central and western Ontario to apply for a total of $300,000 in grants that focus on learning and building the skills and capacity of local communities.
Milverton All Wheels Park Committee Member and Mornington Optimist, Tricia Holmes Storey, says, “We are hugely excited to receive this grant of $40,000 towards our project… the kids in the community are going to love this new facility and we’ve been working hard to make this park a reality for over a year now. We are so grateful to Zehr Insurance in Milverton and Van Allen Insurance in Listowel for alerting us to this opportunity and offering support for our application.”
A step beyond typical funding, The Commonwell’s L.E.A.F. initiative is supporting community projects that focus on learning new skills and building resiliency and capacity for the long-term health of the communities.
“We had almost 100 applications and they were all worthy of supporting. Making the selection was difficult, but we feel the 2022 L.E.A.F. grant recipients represent a very impressive range of community causes that will result in a long-term community investment by funding the sharing of knowledge,” said Tim Shauf, president and CEO of The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group. “We are excited to see these programs and initiatives across Commonwell country come to life and serve the people and communities for years to come.”
