The Gaines-Jones Education Foundation is a private nonprofit organization (501(c)(3) founded in 2001 by Anita Jones Roehrick and husband Robert M. Roehrick which 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.
Anita and Robert established the Gaines-Jones Education Foundation 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 small family foundation out of our home office in the San Francisco Bay area with zero staff and a bi-coastal Board of Directors.
Over our many years of giving, we have awarded upwards of $330,000 in scholarships and discretionary grants 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. |