March 18, 2025
Grant partnership with Coover, Commerce Trust tops $8.6 million
The Community Foundation of the Ozarks, in partnership with the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation and Commerce Trust, granted a total of $250,000 to 12 school districts, school foundations and nonprofits. The grants support mental health initiatives for youth from birth to age 21 in rural communities across central and southern Missouri.
The recipients of the Coover Regional Youth Mental Health Grants are:
- Cape Girardeau Public Schools Foundation: $22,975 to host Family Mental Health Awareness events and Hope Squad trainings, and to provide additional counseling services during the school year and summer
- Children’s Center of Southwest Missouri: $25,000 to provide salary support for a clinical child therapist at the Monett Center
- Community Counseling Center: $25,000 to establish Hope Squads, a peer-to-peer suicide prevention program, for the Perry County and Jackson school districts
- Fair Play R-II School District: $18,650 to expand student mental health services and support small group therapy sessions
- Howell Valley R-I School District: $13,500 to offer a mental health and health care exploration program for fifth- to eighth-grade students in partnership with Harvard Medical School
- Jefferson Franklin Community Action Corporation: $25,000 to provide accessible in-school counseling, mental health education and early intervention services
Grant recipients gathered in Springfield on March 18 to receive the Coover Regional Youth Mental Health Grants, presented by the Community Foundation of the Ozarks in partnership with the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation and Commerce Trust.
- Lafayette House: $25,000 to expand the Prevention Education Program through school-based interventions, community outreach and parent education in southwest Missouri
- Marshfield R-I School District: $19,923 to expand mental health services by hiring interns to work with the district’s current therapist
- Missouri Empowerment Project: $25,000 to hire three full-time clinicians to provide school-based therapy in the Mountain Grove, Ava and Lebanon school districts
- Poplar Bluff School District: $8,000 to certify the school’s current therapist in play therapy
- Southwest Missouri Community Alliance: $25,000 to implement Sources of Strength, a peer-to-peer suicide intervention program, in Newton and Lawrence counties
- West St. Francois County R-IV School District: $16,952 to create a sensory resource room, provide official training for the therapy dog and establish a calming closet
“Knowing that the increased suicide rate for youth in rural communities is often due to lack of access to resources, these grants are vitally important,” said Jill Reynolds, senior vice president at Commerce Trust and chair of the Coover Foundation grant selection committee. “We’re grateful to support the good work of these agencies to ensure brighter futures for the youth in their communities.”
Julia Dorothy Coover, a 30-year Commerce employee, founded the Louis L. and Julia Dorothy Coover Charitable Foundation in 1992 to honor her husband’s memory. The private foundation, managed by Commerce Trust, has funded more than $8.6 million in grants to benefit rural communities and school districts across the CFO’s service area since the partnership began in 2001.
