Photos – Inaugural Gifford Job Fair

‘Drawing people together’: GYAC Turkey Giveaway brings happiness, laughter

GIFFORD — Turkey giveaways are not just about the food, but also about building community relationships through service and laughter, organizers say. That's the mantra that leaders with the Gifford Youth Achievement Center held as they passed out 200 turkeys to families during the 18th Annual Turkey Giveaway on Monday evening. "Service is the pillar to building a solid community," said event co-organizer Freddie Woolfork, GYAC's longtime director of public relations and facilities operations. "The volunteers here are helping out while also getting to know each other, writing down each other's phone numbers and knowing their names. This is about finding common ground and working as a team." As the holiday season quickly approaches, community leaders want to make sure ...

Retired educator honored for sowing seeds in lives of county’s youth

It is a peaceful space that A. Ronald Hudson finds filled with restful moments amid the citrus groves. Here in the orchard, the lessons of harvesting and sowing remain a constant in life – in and out of the field. “I would go in the grove, get on my tractor and forget about everything else,” said the longtime educator, of the therapeutic feeling he gets from minding the land, years after trading in a life of walking the school hallways and guiding students. “I’m strictly a nature person,” said Hudson, who turned 93 on July 1, talking of tending to the soil, planting oranges and grapefruit about a mile from his Vero Beach home. Hudson worked in the citrus groves ...

Growing Space: GYAC students learn plant science through NASA, astronauts

GIFFORD — What’s the difference between plants that grow on the Earth and those that sprout to life in space? That’s one of many questions astronauts aboard the International Space Station - floating more than 250 miles above the planet - are using experiments to find out. But on Earth, as it is in the skies above, it is also a question Leslie Nicole Munroe ponders as she teaches fourth-grade students at the Gifford Youth Achievement Center how to grow plants on the ground.  Munroe, a gardening instructor at the center, said studying plants that might grow in space will help humans understand how Earth’s environment affects plants’ growth. “The significant difference is gravity, though it is not the only ...