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Drive For Charity donations go right to work

Less than three weeks after the annual fund raising event, Greenway gives out $236,354 to five local charities

A record number of drivers passed through Greenway toll booths May 19, and the sixth annual Drive For Charity, even taking into account a struggling economy and a rainy day (that usually drives rider numbers down), collected $235,354.87 -- $10,000 more than the then record setting $226,246 collected in 2010.

Just two weeks and four days after the Drive For Charity, Dulles Greenway managers invited the five local nonprofits who benefit from the annual fundraiser to a June 6 light lunch at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm in Ashburn and handed over the checks.

The 14-mile privately owned toll road from Dulles International Airport to Leesburg debuted the Drive For Charity in 2006 -- all tolls collected the third Thursday of May go to the program.

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There’s no overhead and every penny goes to the Greenway’s own scholarship program and to five local nonprofits: Fresh Air/Full Care, Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter, Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy, March of Dimes and ECHO (Every Citizen Has Opportunities).

Terry Hoffman, the Greenway’s manager of customer and public relations, said the success of the fund raising can be attributed directly to the support of the entire community. “That makes it possible for us to give this amount of money.”

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Thanks to the Drive For Charity, Fresh Air/Full Care will continue funding summer camp for hundreds of children whose parents otherwise would have to leave a child home unsupervised in order to stay on the job.

Janis Chamblin thanked the Greenway for the donations to Fresh Air/Full Care. “Over and over again, it really helps the families and parents who can’t afford summer camp, and don’t have to worry about where their kids are in the summer. And the kids have fun.”

Parents at Inova Fairfax Hospital NICU can stay with their children 24 hours a day, the nurses are trained to support the families and the NICU family support, a March of Dimes project, provides scrap booking, Mother’s Day brunch, Father’s Day dinner and ice cream socials. The NICU Family Support program would not exist without the Greenway’s support, said Sara Donahue.

The Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy will make its summer camps available to more children at a more affordable cost, and it will expand its monitoring of Loudoun’s wetlands, including the Dulles Greenway Wetlands.

ECHO will purchase a fourth van to get its disabled adult program participants to and from their jobs in Loudoun and Fairfax.

And LAWS will continue to reach out to abused women and their children and offer more support, both social and legal. “We are more than a shelter,” said Brenda MacEoin, chair of the LAWS board of directors. “We provide lots of services free. We were the first women’s shelter, in 1992, to have a lawyer on staff.” Other programs, all free, MacEoin noted, are the new Child Advocacy Center, domestic violence, teen violence prevention and the Resourceful Woman Thrift Shop in Leesburg.

Greenway CEO Thomas Sines noted that the Greenway has learned a lot about fund raising in the last six years. “We knew nothing six years ago. We’ve had great success and have raised more money every year and I know the charities put it to the best use possible.”

ECHO buses are such a common sight on the Greenway, Sines said, that he gets inquiries about the Greenway connector buses. He dubs it “Bill’s Greenway Bus Service,” named for ECHO’s CEO Bill Haney.

The Greenway’s Board of Directors approves the Drive For Charity in three-year increments, Sines said. He will be before the board in July asking for another three-year extension and has every confidence the answer will be “yes.”

In its first six years, the Drive For Charity has raised and distributed $1,266,810 to scholarships and to Loudoun charities 

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