The Minnesota Timberwolves and the FastBreak Foundation honored the Way to Grow organization during Tuesday night’s home game versus the Milwaukee Bucks.
Throughout the month of March, the FastBreak Foundation is focusing its efforts on education, fostering the love of reading and putting books in the hands of Minnesota children.
The Way to Grow organization is an advocate for learning. Way to Grow empowers parents to be their children’s first and foremost teachers. Working with the most isolated families, its goal is to ensure every child has an equal opportunity to succeed in school and life. Last year, Way to Grow served over 2,300 people in the Twin Cities.
“This has been a great opportunity to provide exposure to our organization and not only to our organization but the cause for education… early education and K-12 education,” Way to Grow Executive Director Carolyn Smallwood said of the experience.
Minnesota Timberwolves President, Chris Wright, presented Smallwood, along with staff member Ronel Robinson with an autographed team print.
Although the group has done presentations before, this night proved to be quite exciting for the organizations. As Ronel Robinson explained it, “It’s wonderful to be honored and for other people get to know us as Way to Grow and just to spread that word that education is vital and important and reading is important and parent involvement is important and education of the children.”
In the past year, the Minnesota Timberwolves FastBreak Foundation and the Minnesota Lynx Foundation have combined to impact 2,028 organizations with $750,000 in-kind donations, 60,000 Tickets for Kids donations, 4,226 volunteer hours, 45 Heroes in the Making on-court presentations and fourteen $5,000 grants.