Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels hosts Grant Week event in Horse Cave

HORSE CAVE, Ky. – Nonprofits from across Southern Kentucky gathered in Horse Cave Wednesday, where the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels handed out grant funding.

“We’re here in the Bowling Green region, giving away 16 for 16 different nonprofits, almost $60,000,” Colonel Sherry Crose, Executive Director of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels, says.

This money can be a huge deal to some of those nonprofits.

“$1,000 or a $5,000 grant is significant for them. It helps them put food in the food pantry. It helps do security gates. It helps shelving for food pantries. They want to spend their dollars to help their clients… so we’re here to help them almost like their operation to keep going through those expenditures that they just don’t want to do,” Colonel Crose said.

One of the big winners was the Public Theatre of Kentucky, who on top of their grant money also received a $1,000 blank check, which will help with a new lighting and sound board.

“It’s a huge help and it will probably cover the entire cost… so we can actually replace both, so that’s a huge help to us… and we can continue doing our shows. We can continue our programming like the special stages theater therapy for children on the autism, and we can continue working with the area adults and children,” producing artistic director Amber Turner said.

The hosts at the American Cave Conservation Association weren’t exempt from the money either, as they look to create a new educational program.

“Those programs will allow students to evaluate their campuses for both water and energy losses and create best management practices to improve those losses and make a change in the environment,” education director Annie Holt said.

This year’s grant in particular means a lot to the team for one reason in particular:

“We’ve had record flooding this year which has caused our… some of the money that we generate comes from Hidden River Cave, the cave that we operate as an educational facility, and it comes from tourism… and this year, we’ve been closed many days because of flooding. So we’re kind of hurting financially, so these kinds of things really help in a year like this,” president and CEO David Foster said.

With 428 applications asking for over $5,000,000 in funding, the recipients are (locations in parentheses):

Public Theatre of Kentucky (Bowling Green/Warren County)

South Central Kentucky Kids on the Block (Bowling Green/Warren County)

SOKY Patriots (Bowling Green/Warren County)

Seek Museum (Logan County/Russellville)

Project Learn (Hardin County/Elizabethtown)

MEALS, Inc. (Warren County/Bowling Green)

Logan County Genealogical Society (Russellville)

Hart County Historical Society (Munfordville)

Green County Ministry Association (Greensburg)

Grayson County Alliance (Leitchfield)

Franklin Simpson Good Samaritans (Simpson County)

Feeding America, Kentucky’s Heartland (Hardin County/Elizabethtown)

Down Syndrome of Southern Kentucky (Bowling Green/Warren County)

Concerned Citizens of Logan County (Russellville)

Churches of Christ Food Bank #3009 (Franklin/Simpson County)

Barren River Animal Welfare Association (Glasgow/Barren County)

Barren County Family YMCA (Glasgow)

Barn Lot Theatre (Edmonton/Metcalfe County)

ACTION Inc. (Bowling Green/Warren County)

American Cave Conservation Association (Hart County/Horse Cave)