It’s the holiday season, a time of giving, and The Champlin Foundations are doing just that, with 200 grants, amounting to more than $18 million, to organizations in Warwick and across Rhode Island this December.

The Champlin Foundations, based in Cranston as distributed more than $497 million, predominantly to Rhode Island institutions, since it began in 1932. This year’s grants total $18,533,450.

A listing of grant recipients and grant amounts will be released when checks are distributed this month. Meanwhile, two local recipients, the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) and the Warwick Public Library, aren’t waiting to share their good news. Both organizations issued releases last week.

CCRI will receive $324,180 that will help to create a “high fidelity Multidisciplinary Clinical Simulation Center, at the school’s Lincoln campus, according to by CCRI president, Ray Di Pasquale.

CCRI is the largest provider of healthcare workers in the state the new state of the art facility will benefit nursing and allied health students.

Di Pasquale said that as the only community college in the state, CCRI has “a responsibility to provide students with appropriate facilities and up-to-date equipment that they will be using in the workplace. With the generous support of the Champlin Foundations, we can ensure that our students graduate with the confidence and the experience they need to succeed in their chosen professions.”

Currently, the community college’s clinical simulation has been limited, but with the grant CCRI will be able to purchase two SimJunior pediatric manikins, two SimMom obstetrical manikins, one SimNewB neonatal/infant manikin, a mechanical ventilator and two noninvasive positive pressure ventilators, which will open the program to more students and majors for use.

With the new equipment students and faculty will have a “controlled environment in which to develop their skills and rehearse the management of complex or crisis situations.”

Throughout Di Pasquale’s tenure alone, CCRI has received a total $1.6 million in funding from the Champlin Foundations.

Throughout the years the Warwick Public library has also received many grants from the Champlin Foundations, which have gone towards creating s Teenspace, the Idea Studio as well as renovations and improvements to the Children’s Library, which was just finished earlier this year.

This year’s grant, totaling $75,912, will help the library improve both public meeting rooms, the glass study rooms and shades to the windows throughout the building.

The shades will allow the library to both cool and shade the library in the summer, when the sun beats through the heavily windowed library as well as conserve heat in the winter.

Although the library itself is a “heavily used” building, Library Director Chris LaRoux explained that the large and small meeting rooms see the most traffic throughout the year.

Each year the meeting rooms host more than 600 gatherings including adult, teen and children’s events, which brings in more than 11,000 people into the library each year.

“The meeting rooms were completed in 1998, that’s almost 20 years ago,” LaRoux said. “Think of all the technological advancements we have had since then. It’s essential we upgrade those rooms.”

The meeting rooms will receive new flooring, a ceiling mounted HD LCD projector for the small meeting room and an Ultra-HD LCD projector for the large room which will also be receiving a new surround sound system.

LaRoux said the previous projectors worked fine for slideshows and spreadsheets, but now that the library hosts so many movie viewings the old systems just weren’t advanced enough to do movies well.

The library will also be purchasing 200 new chairs for the rooms and for use around the library.

“Some of our chairs are literally falling apart and we have to remove a lot annually,” LaRoux said.

The endeavor to purchase new chairs alone would be an expensive one, and LaRoux said without the Champlin Foundations’ support, a lot of the improvement projects they have taken on would not have been feasible.

“Without these grants it would be extremely difficult for us to attempt projects like this,” LaRoux said. “We would have to get the funding from somewhere; we couldn’t do it ourselves. We’d be stuck, but these projects have made the library better for so many people annually. The Champlin Foundations is an absolutely wonderful organization. We are so fortunate to have them here in Rhode Island supporting local institutions.”

LaRoux believes the improvements to the library will be finished early next year, the work happening at night or over a weekend when the library isn’t open so public use of the library would go uninterrupted and remain available.

For more information on the Champlin Foundations visit www.champlinfoudnations.org.