Youth Homes of Mid-America Receives Grant from Prairie Meadows

Youth Homes of Mid-America has received a $10,000 grant from Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino to help support the Jacobson Challenge Grant Campaign. The grant will be awarded at the annual grants ceremony at Prairie Meadows on February 11, 2010.

The Community Betterment Grant will be used to help reach the Jacobson Challenge Grant Campaign which is a $1.2 million capital campaign. The campaign is designed to match the generous gift of $1.2 million from Dick Jacobson. That gift was used to construct a new 14 bed LEED Certified residential cottage on the Ross Campus Treatment Center in Johnston, the only LEED Certified residential unit for at risk youth in the state of Iowa.

The grant comes from the Prairie Meadows Grants Advisory Committee which is comprised of 18 volunteer community members from the greater Des Moines community. In 2009, Prairie Meadows achieved the milestone of contributing over $1 billion in grants, taxes and charitable donations in the state of Iowa. Youth Homes of Mid-America has received a grant from Prairie Meadows for each of the last seven years for various programs and campaigns.

Ron Stehl, the Executive Director of Youth Homes, noted “We are extremely appreciative of the efforts of Prairie Meadows to help us meet the Jacobson Challenge. Meeting the challenge will enable us to help some of Iowa’s most troubled youth in a state of the art LEED Certified building.