In honor of the 24-year-old Georgia woman battling a flesh-eating disease, people around the country and the world have responded with prayers and well wishes, and donated blood in her honor. Today Aimee Copeland's hometown will make its own contribution in the form of cold, hard cash.

In a ceremony tonight, Snellville, GA, town officials will present Copeland's family with a check for $16,500, according to this report.

In a recent blog update, her father Andy Copeland, a Spartanburg native and USC graduate, offers thanks to the many people who have donated to his daughter. The financial support is important because prosthetics for Copeland will be expensive.

"We have come to realize that $150,000 for prosthetics may have been a conservative estimate," Copeland wrote. "Aimee will require a set of body-powered limbs and a set of myo-electric limbs. She will also require ongoing fittings for the ever-changing condition of her amputated limbs, which is required for continued comfort."

Fighting the disease has required that surgeons remove Aimee's left leg at the hip. They also amputated her right foot and both hands. Aimee contracted the flesh-eating bacteria and the disease, necrotizing fasciitis, following a fall from a zip line while on vacation. 

It is believed the bacteria entered Copeland's body through a gash in her leg after she fell into an infected creek.

Though often fatal, Aimee's father remains convinced his daughter will be a survivor. Copeland, who has spent months in the hospital, recently was released and headed for an undisclosed rehab center in Georgia.

Copeland recently wrote that Aimee is now embracing life both as a challenge and an opportunity, just months after the accident that changed her life.