KCGB applies for affiliation with Keep America Beautiful
KCaulder@CalhounTimes.com
Keep Calhoun-Gordon Beautiful, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting a “cleaner, greener place to live, work and play” in Gordon County, recently applied for affiliation with Keep America Beautiful, a national organization dedicated to developing and promoting a national cleanliness ethic.
Becoming an affiliate, according to founding KCGB member Judy Peterson, will provide the organization with access to Keep America Beautiful’s more than 600 affiliate organizations, their resources and educational tools. If approved for affiliation, it will also mean KCGB can apply for specialty grants to fund environmental projects and partner with other local groups to take part in beautification initiatives.
“This affiliation will make things possible for us that we haven’t been able to do before,” Peterson said. “We’ll have access to resources and materials for teaching others about what it is we do that have been shown to really work in other communities like ours.”
In order to become affiliated, it is required that local organizations establish a board of directors, attend a Keep America Beautiful training session and create a community plan with goals and objectives. Keep CalhounGordon Beautiful plans to start this process as soon as early September.
“Depending on how things go with the coronavirus, we’re hoping to have a meeting in early September and invite Keep America Beautiful organizers here to Calhoun. We will host a meet-andgreet, and they will have a two-hour session for prospective board members and community members to learn more about our program,” Peterson said.
From there, KCGB will invite interested members of the public to join the board.
“Our main concern is that we get a nice, broad spectrum of people on that board who, number one, have an interest in what we do, and, number two, represent our community,” Peterson continued. “It’s very important to us that this board feels like a real picture of what Gordon County is.”
First and foremost, board members must be committed to helping individuals gain responsibility for their own environmental footprint, educating others about positive behaviors and community improvement, developing partnership and community alliances in an effort to achieve sustainability and volunteerism. They will also need to be dedicated to Keep Calhoun-Gordon Beautiful’s three main goals: litter prevention, beautification, waste reduction and recycling.
For more information about Keep Calhoun-Gordon Beautiful and its initiatives, visit www.keepcalhoungordonbeautiful.org.
Capitol Beat News Service
While initial unemployment claims in Georgia continued to decline last week, the state paid out an all-time record of more than $857 million in state and federal jobless benefits.
That’s almost three times the benefits payments the state agency issued during all of last year.
“We are paying more Georgians more benefits than we ever have before,” Georgia Commissioner of Labor
Mark Butler said Thursday. “No one would have imagined in the same year we experienced our lowest monthly number of claims since 1975 that we would pay almost three years’ worth of benefits in one week.”
Initial unemployment claims filed during a short holiday week totaled 105,160, down 12,325 from the previous week.
That marked the 10th week in a row that initial jobless claims in Georgia have gone down.
Since the week of March 21, when Georgia businesses began closing to comply with a shelter-in-place order put in place to discourage the spread of coronavirus, the accommodation and food services job sector has accounted for the most initial unemployment claims, with 732,709 claims filed.
The health care and social assistance sector is next with 348,660 jobless claims, followed closely by retail trade with 330,152 claims.
“Our staff continues to focus daily on unpaid claims, resolving as many of these issues as possible,” Butler said. “As not everyone is eligible for unemployment benefits, it is our responsibility to administer state and federal unemployment programs to the best of our ability making sure we only pay eligible claimants.
“Sometimes, these claims are challenging and require research and attention greatly increasing the time it takes to find resolution.”
More than 116,000 jobs are listed online at EmployGeorgia.com for Georgians to access. The labor department offers online resources for finding a job, building a resume, and assisting with other reemployment needs.