ECM Receives Van

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Eastside Community Ministry is an organization that the community leans on, in many ways for support.

Aside from its food pantry and clothing programs the enterprise conducts and supports multiple youth programs throughout the area. This week they were able to receive a full size, passenger van to shuttle the youth around to various events. 

“Our old van, it was getting pretty tired and we actually had a nickname for it, we called it the Hooptie. So, it was really nice to have the new van. It’s just great to have the extra space, we were able to get more kids in here. We are now at our max number we have 40 kids, so it was able to give us that extra number to bring everything up to speed for us. And we’re just so happy to have it. And we’re so thankful to have the Straker Foundation to be able to help us on things like that. So thankful,” ECM Youth Program Manager Brandon Harney said.

The 2022 Ford Transit 350 spent its first three years and 30,000 miles in Texas before being purchased by ECM. The van now sports the ECM logo, thanks to the efforts from students involved in Foxfire School’s Digital Media and Screen Printing program.  

“The Eastside van purchase was one of our Spring Grant projects. And during that Spring Grant project time period we gave away $2.1 Million. And so this is one portion of what we decided to fund. And we like this project, the van, because it involves so many aspects of projects that we’re interested in, primarily children. Helping children,” J.W. and M.H. Straker Charitable Foundation President and Executive Director Susan Holdren said.

ECM plans to put the new van to use in the following days by hauling the kids in their youth program to the Dresden pool for some outdoor, summer break recreation.