By Darcee Kilsdonk, CCCC Executive Director |

Clackamas County Children’s Commission (CCCC) is proud to be an official PNC Bank partner and thrilled to announce we have just been awarded $30,000 from the PNC Bank Foundation! With this funding, we can extend our Cooking Matters® courses to include an additional 200 families, offering cooking classes and all of the fun cooking gear and free groceries included in this program! Click here for more information about Cooking Matters® at CCCC.

PNC Bank is new to the Portland area but has a longstanding relationship with the early childhood community. Grow Up Great is PNC’s foundation for corporate responsibility and their focus is on early care and education. They support programs in a variety of ways, including matching employee contributions to DonorsChoose (a website for teachers to get specific projects funded), providing books to classrooms, promoting volunteerism in programs like ours, and providing early learning resources for both parents and educators.

Our partnership with PNC started last December with funding for two of our classroom projects through DonorsChoose. In February, we became official Grow Up Great partners. Soon after, in April, PNC employees from the Portland branch joined 10 of our virtual classrooms as volunteers during story time. They read Peg + Cat: The Race Car Problem by Karen Williams, providing every child with their own copy of the book! 

We want to extend our sincerest gratitude to PNC Bank and its employees for continuing to support our mission. We also want to give a special thank you to Brian Stewart, VP and Director of Client and Community Relations for Oregon and SW Washington, for engaging CCCC in this partnership. We look forward to finding new ways to partner, impacting our community together!