One of the upsides of the pandemic is that it helped communities, families, and organizations strive for better work-life balance. Families and friends spent more time with the people they love and worked from home.
In April 2020, we helped ease our customers’ transition into virtual work-life by setting up free WiFi hotspots across our service areas.
GVTC and The GVTC Foundation partnered with local organizations to open up hotspot locations for struggling students and families experiencing hardships at the height of the pandemic.
We understand that access to the internet is crucial to many loyal customers who work, teach and learn from home. That’s why we’ve opened community WiFi spots to use, free of charge, to help our customers achieve a work-life balance from home.
We’ve also extended this service through July 2021 to include 13 community free WiFi spots spread across one Blanco office, five schools, and seven food bank locations.
2. Issued Capital Credits for GVTC Members
Even before the pandemic, we’ve been giving out funding to GVTC members in the form of Capital Credits.
Because GVTC is a member-owned Texas Cooperative, we disburse surplus revenues above our yearly operating expenses to members.
This year, GVTC’s Capital Credit issuance has reached an all-time high, amounting to $7.5 million credits for members. This is a record-breaking increase of $250,000 from our 2020 Capital Credits issuance, which was $7,250,000.
3. Giving Back to the Community
The United States recorded up to 35,000 to 70,000 COVID-19 new cases per day between April and July 2020.
According to the reports released by Texas Health and Human Services, Texas witnessed up to 10,000 new cases and 250 daily deaths between March and October of the same year.
The Gonzales Healthcare Systems Foundation in Texas is one such hospital that had it rough.
They’d lacked a ventilator at the peak of the pandemic, making them move patients who needed urgent care to Austin or San Antonio. Though the State of Texas helped out with two ventilators then, they now want them back.
Businesses and individuals contributed medical equipment and cash that helped improve survival rates. GVTC donated $7,500 towards a five-way ventilator.
Furthermore, GVTC made it possible for you to give back to the community using the Round-Up for Change program. For a dollar or less, you can make a difference in helping students in need of scholarships and grants. You can partake in this program here.
4. Empowering Students with Creative and Educational Solutions
We’ve invested in the lives of youths in our community through scholarships.
The GVTC Foundation has awarded up to $185,000 to deserving students since 2015 using these scholarships:
- The Ritchie T. Sorrells Leadership Scholarship
- The Ola Armstrong Volunteer Scholarship.
In 2019, we added another scholarship to our fleet—the Vocational and Technical Scholarship.
This scholarship awards outstanding high school graduates committed to continuing their education in a technical or vocational field.
This year, with the help of the New Braunfels Area Community Foundation (NBACF), we granted a total of $45,000 to three high school seniors in GVTC’s service area.
We also intend to grant $2,500 to 56 high school seniors each, based on nomination by their school’s faculty and staff, amounting to $140,000 in scholarship awards.
Along with this, we included fun and creative solutions to enable members of our community to adapt gradually to life after the pandemic.
We hosted our debut gaming tournament in May 2021 and awarded up to $250 in prizes using Esports, a leading form of entertainment.
Since we’re a local internet service provider, we value and support the future of our local community and believe that each contribution we make leaves an impact.
Wrap Up
The pandemic left us without the chance to do many usual things we somewhat took for granted.
Things such as the inability to travel, meet up to grab a bite, or even run our small businesses efficiently made us discover the treasures in our backyards.
Albeit adapting to the pandemic situation, GVTC’s actions were influenced by what we consider the most important—health, family, and community.
That’s why we were able to find some good in the midst of it all.
