An effort by the Mountain View High School football community to help one of its families, which lost its home in a fire on Christmas Day, has exceeded expectations this week.
The Van Horn family was hit by a fire on Sunday night, and the home ended up being a total loss. The family’s father, Michael, is the Mountain View football Touchdown Club president and the two sons in the family have played football at the school.
Mountain View football officials set out to raise $4,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to help the family.
As of Thursday night, the fundraising effort had raised $19,377 from 163 donations.
The football team also held a donation drive, where people could donate clothing and gift cards to the family, for two hours on last Wednesday morning. A link to the Go Fund Me can be found on Gwinnett Daily Post dot com.
For anyone who thinks that one person can’t effect a positive impact in multiple communities, meet Alessandra Ferrara-Miller, the founder of Forsyth County-based All For Lunch.
Five years ago, the California native established All For Lunch Inc. in Suwanee to pay off the lunch debt for four elementary schools in the North Gwinnett Cluster. Ferrara-Miller’s efforts have since blossomed throughout schools in the metro Atlanta area.
In mid-December, Ferrara-Miller announced that her one-person nonprofit erased the lunchroom debt in more than 250 schools in Gwinnett, Fulton, Cobb, Barrow and Fayette counties. All For Lunch gave more than $130,000 to schools — including more than $75,000 in Gwinnett — so that families wouldn’t go into the holiday season with outstanding school lunch debt.
On December 19, Ferrara-Miller said she planned to meet with administrators in Forsyth County to eliminate lunch debt in more than 40 schools before the end of 2022. Ferrara-Miller said she got the idea to pay off school lunch debt after seeing a news report about a young student in Alabama who was sent home from school one day with a stamp on his arm that said, “I need lunch money.”
A digital asset portfolio manager by day, Ferrara-Miller established All For Lunch (using the book “Nonprofits for Dummies” as a guide) and began her push to put a dent in the debt many families accrue in school cafeterias across the metro area.
According to the Educational Data Initiative, more than 1.5 million students can’t afford a school lunch, resulting in a school meal debt of some $250 million. More than three-quarters of the schools in the country have unpaid lunch debt and at the beginning of the 2022-23 school year, the free lunches that had been offered to students in the wake of the COVID pandemic were no longer offered.
North Gwinnett grad Seth Anderson committed Sunday to the Iowa Hawkeyes football program.
Anderson was a hot prospect in the transfer portal after a breakout 2022 season at Charleston Southern, where he earned Freshman All-American honors and was the Big South Conference Offensive Player of the Year as a redshirt freshman. The 6-foot, 178-pound wide receiver had 42 catches for 628 yards and seven touchdowns. Anderson, who earned second-team all-region honors and honorable mention all-county acclaim as a North senior in 2020, is the son of longtime NFL receiver Willie “Flipper” Anderson, whose 336 receiving yards against the Saints in 1989 is an NFL record. Seth chose the Hawkeyes over Georgia Tech, James Madison, and Appalachian State, among others. Iowa went 8-5 this season, with a 5-4 mark in the Big Ten. The Hawkeyes capped off their season Saturday with a 21-0 win over Kentucky in the Music City Bowl.
Gwinnett County officials are warning residents to be wary of anyone who shows up at their door claiming to work for the county’s water department — because that person is an imposter.
Officials said reports have been coming in to Gwinnett County Water Resources about someone trying to enter homes while claiming to work for a Gwinnett County lab. Most of the attempts have targeted Spanish-speaking families who live in the Norcross area.
Residents are advised to not let anyone asking to test their water into their homes. They are also asked to call 9-1-1, especially if they don’t feel safe or they think someone is trying to break into their home.
They can also call the Department of Water Resource’s 24-hour dispatch line if they have questions or concerns.
On January first of 2019 history was made as Gwinnett County Commissioner Marlene Fosque and school board member Everton Blair became the first African-Americans to serve on their respective boards.
Four years later, they will both leave their respective offices this weekend.
Saturday marked the last official day of Fosque’s and Blair’s terms of office. Blair opted to not seek re-election this year while Fosque’s bid for a second term in the County Commission District 4 ended in defeat last month.
At Fosque’s last commission business meeting on December 13, she quoted Nelson Mandela as she reflected on her time in office.
“He said, ‘What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we led,’ Fosque said. “I hope and I pray that I made a difference in your lives as a commissioner, and I want you to know that you definitely made a difference — a positive, not just a difference but a positive difference — in my life and I thank you all.”
Fosque and Blair were celebrated by their respective colleagues earlier this month, not only for the historic firsts that their elections represented, but also for the work they did on their respective boards.
Fosque, for example, was hailed for her work on Project RESET and Project RESET 2.0, programs that she championed and helped get off the ground to help families with financial assistance to stay in their residences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Blair received a plaque from Gwinnett County Public Schools Superintendent Calvin Watts during the school board’s December meeting.
Blair, who was the board’s chairman in 2021, was recognized for bringing “innovation, the innovative ideas” and “valuable leadership input” to the board and for his commitment to the school system during Watts’ presentation.
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