P.A.W. gets donations from local women's group

BY CHUCK VANDENBERG

PCC EDITOR

FORT MADISON - The local chapter of the Beta Sigma Phi sorority donated $700 to the P.A.W. no-kill animal shelter in Fort Madison on Monday.

Karen Hope and Deb Sylvester presented the check to P.A.W. Director Sandy Brown at the facility.

The shelter is looking at some steep expenses in repairing the septic system after it failed earlier this spring. Brown said some preliminary work has been completed but she said when the tanks were dug up they found three tanks instead of two and the shelter had all three tanks pumped out.

"They were looking decent," she said. "Worst case is replacing all three and a new leach field. Best case is that we would only have to expand our leach field, and then the other option is anything in between.

"Say we get new tanks, then we have to have those taken out, the ground dug up, regravel, and pull out our fence. And say the septic tanks are $20,000 but then there's probably another $20,000 in work that needs to be done to get them out and put everything back together."

She said the group will know in the next couple of weeks from the engineer as to what will be the best option for the group.

Hope said the sorority is a group of about 20 local women that do fundraisers throughout the year to help local groups and the P.A.W. situation was an important one that they wanted to contribute to.

"We're donating $500 from our funds, plus another $200 from us individually, which isn't huge. But the real goal is to bring this to the front so others will do the same thing," she said.

The sorority is a worldwide entity with more than 200,000 women globally who network socially and help raise funds for their respective local charities.

Hope said this year the local chapter has been able to donate more because of a donation they received.

"This year is more than normal because the group received a donation. Technically, we only are supposed to do so much because of the non-profit status, but yay for this year because we get to do more," she said.

Other groups that have received funds from the group include the Old Fort Committee and the North Lee County Food Pantry.

"This is so important and so expensive to them," Hope said.