foundation which since two thousand and twelve the belmont savings bank foundation has given over seven hundred thousand dollars to local organizations the foundation fo  its efforts on projects to support education affordable housing health and human services youth programs and other types of community organizations or civic minded projects that improve the quality of life around us we are on of that you're all here this evening to celebrate the five waltham nonprofit organizations who have won our grant giving competition the belmont savings bank foundation launched this program in april by allowing people to nominate a wall for the nonprofit for a chance to win a ten thousand dollars grant the nomination the nominated organizations then submitted plans for how they would use the funds if they were to win all qualified organizations along with a summary of their propose programs were placed on an online ballot and waltham residents were encouraged to vote for their choice or his asian the five organizations with the most votes will be announced tonight for the first time and will be presented with grants reaching ranging from two thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars i'd like to recognize a few people in attendance tonight state representative thomas stanley community and work so hard for that the countless number of lives that you've helped to improve and quality of life and walk him in thank you to belmont savings bank this is really incredible and from so i'm sure it's only going to increase in waltham in the coming years  thank you good evening everybody you know we have fifteen organizations on the ballot and we've got over twenty six hundred votes so thank you all for because you know every every organization deserves to win and it's clear that the voting was close and the people in waltham were engaged so before we get started with the anticipated results i want to recognize the organizations can be like the miss america thing going to go backwards we're going to recognize the organizations that did not get the top five spots and we're going to ask you to come up and we decided that since you are here we still should do something for everyone so all of these organizations even if you were not one of the top five winners we're going to give you each a five hundred dollar grant for your participat so i would welcome a representative from each of these organizations as i caught your name come on up for a group photo of the greater waltham mark no junior achievement of northern new england middle six human service agency please come up neighbors who care please come up and join reach beyond domestic violence the salvation army walt of you who are still seated can start counting the money but we don't know what order yet so but i want to thank all these organizations they were recognized by the community and selected by the community so thank you so without further ado we're going to start going through our winners and we're going to start off by i want like to welcome bruce who is our foundation trey thank you very much h place our fifth place winner is the recipient of two thousand dollars this organization is committed to creating a legacy of land conservation in wall them by promotion protecting restoring in acquiring open space the community benefits from this land for its record the community benefits from from this land for its recreational and education uses funds will support the western greenway trail improvement project creating maps for the community and training trail stewards to help maintain the wonderful land currently a seven mile trail the western greenway will be a twenty mile path once completed i'd like to welcome representatives from the wall family and trussed up to collect their checks which is an awesome trail that now is going to have more trail guides and maps and folks taking care of it so there is no reason why none of you can get out to the trail it's a wonderful resource that connects over one thousand two hundred acres of open space in cultural resources historical resources it's a wonderful wonderful wonderful resource so we're very happy about this and we're pleased to compete with all of you fifteen awesome organizations from waltham you know we we hadda it was a hard battle but i am very pleased that we're all here tonight thank you thanks this organization has supported children and teens in the greater area providing the youth in our community with the tools they need to succeed we provide caring adult mentors and a safe place to go during the out of school time this organization is a leader in providing positive program for youth with a special emphasis on serving the disadvantaged children funds will support a new initiative called world arts this program will allow club members to gain the creative and therapeutic benefits of the arts while exploring different cultures i'd like to welcome the representatives from the walking boys and girls club up to collect their check thank you so much i'm eric young on the executive director at the waltham boys and girls club and a very big thank you to them and savings bank for on not only this this great opportunity but for everything that you do in the community for everything you've done for for the waltham wasn't girls club i'm everything from financial but having all for everything you do in this this community this organization strives to bring school personnel and parents together to best serve the students in the student population of the school one way we've done this is by establishing establishing a health and wellness council which focuses on health and wellness initiatives funds will support the creation of a number of physical activity experiences for students and families such as the prospect hills hike the box program the step to success event and health and wellness night i'd like to welcome representatives from  the funds really appreciate of the belmont savings bank the foundation really did not know that they had such a tremendous outreach to the community so very happy to be accepting their money also on a big shout the teachers and staff the plimpton and super helpful super motivated to try to get some things role implemented in another shout out to my wife she's not here she was able to take a lot of the crazy ideas i have a lot of the experience that i had and roll it all into a grant that made sense and that may have helped out with some of our votes so very excited to be part of that the grand we plan on spending using the money for four different activities saw physical activity experiences we're calling it two of them is to build off the current successes that clinton already has which is their mazing box program which is won by a great group of dedicated parents that invest their mornings we have i think it's over one hundred children hundred twenty that practice a paid an hour before school program so part of the funds will be designated to support that program clinton is also mice children are in second in their grid and clinton has also had in the past five years a health and wellness night where we celebrate on some of our local organizations we promote physical activity experiences as well as send the message of health and wellness taking the funds again using them to create two more experiences one to use thank you all that went to us to take advantage of the prospect park it's beautiful it's been moved up there recently we want to be able to expose the green space of prospect hill to some of the children at plymouth and that may not use it or don't have access to it as well as to message that we're trying to create a team here one to do that that addresses the overall health and wellness of students so then you do everybody i was really hard for me to vote i have a connection to the boys and girls that as well as the land trust and helped you walk them so i was glad of you are customers of belmont savings thank you there are many in here who aren't so i'll just make a blatant plug feel free to stop by and see is we're in the star market and many of our team is back there today and i think you'll find we have a special special brand of service and that's what we're committed to the communities we serve now with that let's talk about our second place winner is the recipient of eight thousand dollars grant this organization's mission is to enhance the education of all students at their school by promoting communication between the school and families providing enrichment opportunities for all students and providing support for teachers and staff of the school these funds are going to go to support for a bus trip to washington d c for the eighth grade students making the education trip accessible to also let's welcome the kennedy middle school  following this program closely this is very authentic quite practical so let me tell you about our first place winner we're going to give a grant of ten thousand dollars to and the votes by the way we're all very tight these top three or four were very very close the first place winner in the organization's mission is to enhance the educational experience of students by supporting providing special events and varied activities to augment the school curriculum as a result of redistricting and city data projections indicating increase student roll it over the next few years the macarthur playground simply cannot accommodate the waltham students any longer so funds will support the expansion of the playground or free more stimulating and challenging play space providing elements that encourage cognitive development and imagination and incorporating components that are specifically designed for children with disabilities i think this is a great great way for us to spend the top award of ten thousand dollars i just wanted to take a minute to think belmont savings for this amazing opportunity and the citizens of wealthy and that voted for some of them thirty nine forty nine times we're very excited and we have been trying to expand our playground for a long time and we've really just started kicking off our fund raising after handling some of the other city stuff and this is just the best way i can think of to kick it off so thank you so much night so she's quadruple booked and so she she was here for about a half hour at the very beginning and sensory guards and congratulations to all it's it's kind of fun to be standing in front of so many people doing so many wonderful things and it's particularly impressive to hear about the collaboration between your groups and this is really a microcosm of the social service fabric of massachusetts and you may not realize it but in massachusetts we are a bit unique across from the rest of the states in the sense of our commitment to social health care educational nonprofits i hate the term nonprofits because i think you profits for all of your constituents in your clients but those organizations in massachusetts are so big and so significant and create so much value for the the electorate of the we have thirty thousand nonprofits in massachusetts there's not another state that has as many non profits per capita as massachusetts five hundred thousand employees seventeen percent of the population of massachusetts work for an organization and the health education or social services field and you all have dozens of it of volunteers for every single one of your employees of the probably three or four million people in massachusetts they're involved here is employees are volunteers in the world of educational health services and social services so that's a big impact that big impact on the economy it's a big impact on people's lives it's a big impact on the quality of life and you know government can't do it all city state local government can't do it all so you are filling those gaps that  otherwise wouldn't be filled and it's it's remarkable work and we're just really proud to be able to knowledge your work and the celebrate your work and to reward your work so thanks for giving