Every year during the Little Norway Festival, the Petersburg Community Foundation awards grants to local nonprofits. This year the event was held at Foundation President Glorianne Wollen’s home. Board member Sue Paulsen greeted the crowd.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome, to year sixteen of the Petersburg Community Foundation!”
The gathered guests, most clad in Norwegian sweaters, erupted into cheers.
“Last year I’m proud to announce that we had a million dollars in the bank, and this year, we have much more!” she told the crowd, to more cheers.
The local foundation is an affiliate of the Alaska Community Foundation. The projects it supports are endowment funded, meaning donations from the public never get spent, but the interest from those savings go to fund local nonprofit projects.
“So in 2008, we started our endowment funds,” Paulsen said. “And we were thrilled to be able to give a grant of $1,500. It was thrilling. To date we have given to the nonprofit projects of Petersburg well over $300,000.”
Paulsen said eventually she hopes the foundation will have enough money to support every grant applicant. But, she said, this year current events inspired a theme when choosing the grant winners.
“I think it’s a topic on most people’s minds that the governor and the legislature have continued to let the kids down,” she said. “We’re in a fiscal crisis in our school, with declining amounts of money. And it’s shocking. So one of our ideas this year in grant making per se, was, let us see if we can support the children of Petersburg.”
The Petersburg Community Foundation gave out nearly $30,000 in grants this year. The biggest one, at $9,259, went to the Petersburg Medical Center for a project that will teach teens to support each other in moments of mental health crisis. They will learn to recognize and understand signs of mental illness and substance abuse, and how to respond to those situations.
Becky Turland is a Community Wellness Specialist with the medical center and wrote the grant.
She said one of the most important things that the program will do is break the stigma around talking about mental health.
“Love our older generation but it was always that – you know – you stay quiet, you don’t talk about it. ‘Everything’s okay,’” she said. “And we’re finding out that’s not the truth. You know, we need to talk about it. We need to move forward. And we don’t want to lose a young person to their mental health battles. So the more we talk about it, the better.”
According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five high school students said they seriously considered suicide in 2021.
Alaska has the second highest rate of suicide deaths in the nation. And suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 – 24.
It’s hard to know what the numbers are in Petersburg because federal law protects the privacy of patients. That means that providers can’t share information that could identify someone. So, the state releases public health data by grouping rural areas or small towns together.
The grant will cover materials for the classes, and certification of two facilitators, including Turland. Petersburg Medical Center Youth Program Coordinator Katie Holmlund will be the other one. She said teens in Petersburg have been asking to learn how to help each other with mental health issues.
“Kids are always the agent of change really. So it’s exciting to hear them talk about it and ask for it and want to be a part of it,” she said.
She said supporting mental health makes for a healthier community.
“I’m hoping that knowledge builds empathy, and a little bit more understanding for what some of our community members are going through every day,” she said. “That’s not a reason to, to bully them or to, to push them to the outskirts. You know, it’s just there’s just different ways to interact with some people. And that’s okay.”
Last year the Petersburg Community Foundation funded a similar grant for a series of free workshops that trained adults to recognize and react to signs of mental health challenges in youth. Holmlund and Turland facilitated those workshops as well. All three filled up quickly, and more are planned for the future. And three quarters of staff at the Petersburg School District took the training.
The teen peer training will begin in the fall. This year all high school students will get nearly five hours of instruction. Going forward, each freshman class will participate in the program.
The foundation awarded grants to eight other nonprofits, including the Children’s Center to cover its playground in wood chips, making it safer for children when they fall; the Petersburg School District to replace the marching band’s failing bass drums and drum kit, and two grants to the Petersburg Marine Mammal Center – one to integrate traditional knowledge into their Summer Science Camp; and another to buy and install weather stations to gather data about landslide risk.
This is also the third year the Petersburg Community Foundation has given out a Community Volunteer of the Year award. This year’s winner is Fire Chief Jim Stolpe. Foundation President Glorianne Wollen presented the award.
“Not only does it come with a trophy – no, there’s no trophy! she joked. “It does come with $1,000 that you get to give to the nonprofit of your choice,” she told Stolpe.
Stolpe told the crowd he plans to give the money to the Petersburg Volunteer Fire Department.
