Chosen Valley Community Foundation

Improving lives through quality of life, educational, and community betterment projects in Chatfield and the surrounding area.

Friends of the Chosen Valley: Probably our most visible project is the playground in the Chatfield city park. This was a community-wide project whereby donations to the Chosen Valley Community Foundation enabled the purchase of the equipment. The Chatfield community rallied around the project to provide the labor. But the CVCF does much more than our city park. Since 2012 we've provided thousands of dollars in grants back into the community for educational projects like the purchase of guitars for music students and programmable robots or paying for a bus to take students to see the play Jane Eyre in the Twin Cities.

A testimonial from first grade teachers at Chatfield Elementary:

"In 2007 , the Chatfield first grade teachers implemented a new initiative to match our first grade readers to their just right level text. We use leveled books on a daily basis so our students can work in their individual reading level to strengthen and challenge their reading ability. We also wanted to send home a book with each student every night to reinforce and practice skills, so we were in need of leveled books for our first grade classrooms."

"Our goal is to teach each individual child at their reading level and to provide a comfortable learning environment where students strengthen their individual skills. By doing this we increase fluency, phonemic awareness, decoding skills and comprehension"

"The Chosen Valley Community Foundation graciously supported our efforts and provided us with funds to purchase books which we could match to our readers. We saw tremendous growth from our first grade readers throughout the course of the school year. We greatly appreciate the Foundation's support of education in Chatfield and in our classrooms."

2007-2008 Chatfield Elementary School First Grade Teachers - Elissa Johnsrud, Julie Young, and Tracy Raaen

What we get, we give back into the community. The board of directors are volunteers from the community who take their responsibility of reviewing grant requests and granting out monies you have donated very seriously. The funds themselves are managed by the Rochester Area Foundation, a well established Foundation that is used by Mayo Clinic.