Vidant Beaufort Hospital awarded $91,500 to 11 recipients on Wednesday, as part of the annual Community Benefit Grants program.

This year’s recipients included: Coastal Pregnancy Center, Food Bank of the Albemarle, Higher Heights Human Services, Mental Health America of East Carolina, Mid-East Commission Area Agency on Aging, Hyde County Health Department, Eagle’s Wings Food Pantry, Boys & Girls Clubs of the Coastal Plain, Albemarle Development Corp., Kaye Lee’s Corner Foundation and Hyde County Non-Profit Private Transportation Corp.

“This is a great day for us because it gives us a chance to kind of let our system come in and show the power of what we can do together,” said Harvey Case, president of Vidant Beaufort Hospital. “It’s very fulfilling to know that we can help outside the walls of the hospital and the services that we provide. … Hopefully this will make Beaufort County, Hyde County and our surrounding counties a better place.”

Annette Eubanks, program director at the Area Agency on Aging, said the organization plans to use the grant money to purchase emergency stock meals for clients to use when volunteers are unable to reach them.

“We have inclement weather, flooding, and a lot of times our volunteers cannot get to our home-delivered meals, and if you realize that our clients there are typically homebound, and these are the only meals that they typically get, so if we can’t get to them then they don’t have a meal,” Eubanks said.

She said the organization will also use part of the grant toward respite funds for caregivers. Those funds allow a full-time caregiver to secure temporary care for a loved one, giving the caregiver the opportunity to take some time outside of the role.

Susie Rollins, executive director of the Coastal Pregnancy Center, said the organization will use the Community Benefits Grants money to purchase co-sleepers, which are mobile cribs that can be placed in beds to keep the infant safe.

Rollins said when parents let infants sleep in the same bed, a parent could roll over on the baby and harm it, potentially leading to death.

“We just want to get babies out of the beds, so we can lower Beaufort County’s awful infant mortality rate,” Rollins said. “We mainly run off of donations and some grants that we get, but if you need it for a baby, we need it, too.”

Many of the recipients were awarded grant money in past years, but the program includes new recipients, as well. Vidant Beaufort accepts letters of intent from various organizations at the start of each year before awarding the money in July to the groups chosen.