Community Caring...

Cherryland Electric Cooperative's members are giving back to the needy of Northern Michigan through Community Caring.

Community Caring is a program that rounds up your bill to the nearest dollar.

The money is then put in our Community Caring Fund. We ask individuals and organizations who are in need to submit an application to our Community Caring board, which oversees the fund.

The Community Caring board is a volunteer group of five people that meets once a month. They represent Cherryland Electric's service territory which includes Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Kalkaska, Manistee and Wexford counties. Given our all-volunteer board only a very nominal amount of money goes to overhead expenses.

Over the past five years, our Community Caring Board has awarded more than $250,000 to deserving individuals and organizations.

In recent years alone, these two contributions have made big impacts:

• Friends of Manistee, a shelter for abused women and children, used money from Community Caring to pave its parking lot and put a fence around its premises to make it safer.
• A single mother living in a small house with four children was furnished with a new stove and other appliances. Other friends chipped in for clothing and food. "It changed our lives," said the mother. "It made us feel respectable again."

Your pennies do make a difference. To enlist in Community Caring, please call Cherryland electric at 486-9401 and leave your name and account number. We thank you on behalf of all the people Community Caring has helped in the past and will help in the future.