COLUMBUS, Miss. (WTVA) -- Columbus Chamber Vice President Macaulay Whitaker works extensively with youth and adult leadership programs and hopes to make them even more successful with help from the CREATE Foundation.
"There are all kinds of places that we are more than happy to share resources and accept help with outside of the traditional funding sources," Whitaker said.
Help has arrived from the CREATE Foundation. On Thursday, it announced Lowndes County as the seventeenth county in its service area.
CREATE offers up $100,000 in the form of a challenge grant.
Lowndes County must come up with $200,000 to go into an endowment fund.
The money will go toward needs which matter to Columbus residents.
"We think that we can be helpful in supporting them and their local organizations and provide charitable assets to things that are important to them, so we look forward to the partnership," CREATE Foundation President Mike Clayborne said.
That partnership will include access to CREATE's extensive demographics information.
"They really analyze a lot of demographics that help us in industrial recruitment," LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins, Jr. said.
Higgins says the timing could not be any better as Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties are combining their economic development efforts.
Clayborne agrees.
"We just think that the regional approach to a lot of the issues and opportunities that we face is the best way to go about it and to support what happens at the local level," Clayborne added.
