Local Nonprofits Granted More than $100,000 By Community Foundation of Greater New Britain
Year-End Funds Will Support Wide Variety of Community Initiatives
The Community Foundation of Greater New Britain concluded its 2005 grant-giving program with more than $100,000 in awards to seven local nonprofit organizations. The grants will support a variety of community initiatives in both health and human services and arts and humanities.
With its year-end grants – the final round of the Foundation’s quarterly grant making process – the Foundation awarded 165 grants totaling more than $893,000 during 2005 to nonprofit agencies and organizations in Berlin, New Britain, Plainville and Southington.
Recipients and awards approved at the Foundation’s December Board meeting include:
- Friendship Service Center, a New Britain-based homeless shelter, $10,000 to support the Center’s Emergency Needs and Assertive Substance Abuse programs, and a $50,000 matching grant to support the Center’s capital campaign. The $3 million capital campaign will help the Center purchase and renovate additional space at 85 Arch Street for permanent supportive housing; create a permanent home for the Center’s “Bicycling Enthusiasms” program and Recycle Bicycle Shop; develop a youth mentoring lab; build retail space and purchase a van for the Center’s Jobs Program; create permanent supportive housing and preserve historic murals in the Center’s Vega Building; and help build the Center’s endowment for long-term financial viability.
- Greater New Britain Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, $15,000 to support the program’s Pathways/Senderos teen pregnancy prevention and youth development program aimed at Latino and other youth. The program, which offers multiple services including academic support, job experience, family life and sex education and self-esteem/enhancement opportunities, among others, is based upon the nationally recognized model developed by Dr. Michael Carrera for the Children’s Aid Society in New York. Participants enroll while in the fifth grade and stay with the program through high school graduation.
- Kensington Rotary Sunrise Club, $2,500 for the purchase of equipment for the Amber Alert Identi-a-Kid program in Berlin. Through the program, Berlin children are photographed and entered into a statewide database supervised by the State of Connecticut Department Of Public Safety. Parents are given a plastic wallet card to provide to police in the event of abduction.
- Polish American Foundation, $10,000 bridge grant to continue the New Britain-based Foundation’s “Opening Doors” employment assistance program. The Polish American Foundation (PAF) serves as one of seven community-based organizations in Hartford and New Britain to serve as an entry point into the Connecticut Works One-Stop Career Center system. PAF recruits clients and enrolls them into the One-Stop system, which provides basic employment assistance, assessment, English-as-a-Second-Language instruction and other employment assistance.
- Women, Infant and Children (WIC) Program, New Britain, $7,500 to support WIC’s Obesity Prevention Program for children. The program is a supplemental nutrition intervention program for eligible low-income women, infants and children up to the age of 5. WIC currently serves about 2,200 New Britain families; some 25 percent of children in these families between the ages of 2 and 4 are considered overweight or obese.
- New Britain Chorale, $1,500 to support the Chorale’s annual spring concert. The Chorale has presented classical music to the public at no cost for the past 30 years. The 2006 spring concert, to take place in March, will feature Vivaldi’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Missa Brevis in B Flat.
- Trinity-on-Main, $10,000 to support a strategic program and business planning process for the restoration and use of Trinity-on-Main at 69 Main Street, New Britain, as a performing arts center. This is the fourth consecutive year that the Foundation has supported the on-going effort to preserve and transform Trinity-on- Main.
“Our fourth quarter grants are reflective of the Community Foundation’s enormous respect for the important work these programs, agencies and organizations perform, and for the wonderful contributions they make to the quality of life throughout Greater New Britain,” said Gerry Amodio, President and Chief Operating Officer of Amodio Worldwide Moving & Storage in New Britain and chair of the Foundation’s Grants Committee.
In addition to its above-referenced discretionary grants, the Foundation’s Board of Directors also approved more than $55,000 in fourth-quarter grants from its pool of donor-advised funds. These funds are established by donors with a specific charitable intent.
For more information on the Foundation, please call (860) 229-6018.
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