$10,000 grant will help expand garden at Jacksonville School for Autism

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The PLAYERS Championship’s Red Coats, who are past volunteer chairpersons involved in charity work, came to announce a $10,000 grant will be provided to the Jacksonville School for Autism.

“They checked all the boxes. You’re talking about children, education, you’re talking about everything we like to stand for,” said Matt Welch, the 2022 volunteer chairman for the PLAYERS Championship.

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Jacksonville School for Autism is a non-profit, private school established in 2005 as a full-service K-12 educational center for children with autism.

It expanded to a building on Jacksonville’s southside two years ago.

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The grant money will help build a new greenhouse and add more raised plant beds to get more kids involved with the garden, which will provide vocational training to students through agro-business. The Red Coats also joined the students in a gardening activity to celebrate.

“It’s a form of therapy, I call it enrichment. Similar to your arts and your music,” said Kayne McPhillips, the Garden Program director who has seen the impact of this firsthand.

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“I’ve had parents come to us in tears because their students have tried vegetables for the first time and it just comes from that sense of ownership of when you grow it, you own it and you wanna try it,” he said. “It’s really impactful.”

Jacksonville School for Autism marks one of 75 total recipients of Red Coat Grants this year.

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