AUGUSTA, Ga. (WJBF) – It’s an important day for us at WJBF. It’s our parent company, Nexstar’s, Founder’s Day of Caring.
It’s a day when we pause to help a local nonprofit organization as a way of thanking the community for its support.
Nexstar’s Founder’s Day of Caring is a company-wide initiative to help local nonprofits. WJBF employees partnered with the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Augusta.
“It’s
very locally oriented where the stations decide what charities or communities or nonprofits they want to support, form their own teams, and then go do their service work,” said Perry Sook, Founder, Chairman & CEO, of Nexstar Media Group, Inc. “So, it’s a very bottoms-up approach to, to say thank you to our local communities.”
WJBF’s own Brad Means and Jennie Montgomery volunteered at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia with the Ronald McDonald House Charity’s new Hospitality cart.
“It’s one thing to talk about it from a news desk, but it is another thing to be in the middle of what this great organization does,” said Jennie Montgomery, WJBF Anchor.
The Community Foundation for the C-S-R-A helped the Ronald McDonald House create the hospitality cart after Hurricane Helene. The cart offers a variety of personal care items, snacks, books, toys, and more to patients at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia.
“The community foundation is just super excited to have had the opportunity to support this initiative,” said Lasima Turmon, Director of Programs at Community Foundation for CSRA. “It was birthed through the needs of the families in the hospital identified shortly after Hurricane Helene.”
The items given to those patients were donated by the community. They were packed up at our Television Park studios and delivered to the Ronald McDonald House by WJBF Staff.
“Today has been such a fabulous example of the way in which we are able to draw upon the compassion of our community to come together and provide essential services that remove barriers and strengthen families and promote healing whenever a child needs healthcare,” said David Jacobsen, President/CEO, Ronald McDonald House Charities Augusta.
The Ronald McDonald House currently provides the hospitality cart three times a week. But the hope is that they can soon have it there more frequently. If you would like to volunteer, you can find information on the
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Augusta website.
“If you want to go beyond just doing volunteer duty and checking a box, if you want to make it a real connection. I think Ronald McDonald House would be an awesome choice,” said Brad Means, WJBF Anchor.