Gaines-Jones Scholars is a public charity (501(c)(3) founded in 2001 by Anita Jones Roehrick and husband Robert M. Roehrick with its primary mission to award annual college scholarships to eligible students with financial need. Formerly known as The Gaines-Jones Education Foundation, the organization mentors youth, promotes youth advocacy and provides need-based annual college scholarships to African-American students in southwest Georgia and the San Francisco Bay area, many of whom are the first in their family to go to college.
Anita and Robert established the organization in memory of Anita’s mother, Mrs. Irene Gaines Jones, her sister, Dr. Betty Jean Jones, and her father, Mr. Silas J. Jones.
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Education was the nucleus of their southwest Georgia family under the leadership of Anita’s mother, Mrs. Irene Gaines Jones, lovingly known to many as Ms. Irene, a sixth-grade teacher/librarian in Worth County for 39 years.
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Anita’s sister, Dr. Bettye Jean Jones, was Professor of Theater and Associate Dean of Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor when she was tragically killed in a plane crash. |
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As is true for many, the experiences of Anita’s father, Mr. Silas J. Jones did not fit inside established channels; school performance was separate from being intellectual and curious about the world. He was an outdoorsman with a self-made entrepreneurial spirit. |
A word from our founders
We run our public charity out of our home office in the San Francisco Bay area with very low overhead, zero staff and a bi-coastal Board of Directors.
Over our many years of giving, we have awarded upwards of $385,000 in scholarships and discretionary grants to over 180 students in Southwest Georgia and the San Francisco Bay Area. Such an honor to work with our dynamic team bringing new mentoring programs to Gaines-Jones Scholars—and their friends!—such as our RIGHT-to-WRITE program providing One-on-One writing sessions via video chat and phone with our Board members and a corps of volunteers led by the erudite writer and grammar guru, Constance Hale. In 2021, we launched the Barbara A. Roehrick Teacher Scholarship to honor Rob’s late mother who had a great love for education and people. Please join us on this journey: Donate Today. —Anita Jones Roehrick, Gaines-Jones Executive Director —Rob Roehrick, Gaines-Jones Trustee |
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The Gaines & Jones families are deeply rooted in the red clay, oak and pine trees of Cusseta,
Putney, Vada, Bainbridge, Camilla, and Albany, Georgia. |