Trucker Buddy International recently announced plans to use the second installment of a $100,000 grant from J.J. Keller & Associates to develop a new teachers curriculum guide.
Trucker Buddy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping educate and mentor schoolchildren via pen-pal relationships between students and professional drivers. The grant, which was given to the organization in 2005 through the J. and Ethel D. Keller Fund within the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, is the largest donation Trucker Buddy has ever received. It will enable the organization to further develop its program and supplement the education of schoolchildren in grades two through eight.
With the funds, the organization will research the materials that should to be included in the revamped teacher’s curriculum guide so that it will meet federal education requirements. It also will make the publication easily available to all of the program’s teachers and drivers. Trucker Buddy will look to its participating teachers as a resource for creating the new guide and already has contacted a few to see if they would like to be involved in the project.
Other projects under the grant currently include increasing the number of driver and teacher participants to expand the program and reach more classes. The organization also is working on publishing a book that features heartwarming stories about the students, teachers and drivers in the Trucker Buddy program.
