Allan Appel Photo
Westside CMT members raise their green cards in approval.
West siders gave the thumbs up — or rather raised green cards of support — to five nonprofits in their quest for support to nab a share of federal funding for local social services.
The unanimous votes to provide a formal letter of support for the nonprofits’ applications for community development block grants (CDBG) — federal support administered through the city — occurred Wednesday night at the January meeting of the Westville/West Hills/Beverly Hills Community Management Team in the cafeteria of the Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School.
Mechele Ellis makes her case.
The CDBG application derby is an annual — and for small nonprofits critical — fundraising ritual in which nonprofits make their case before the Board of Alders.
Management team letters of support strengthen but by no means guarantee an applicant’s case.
At Wednesday night’s west side meeting, neighbors asked the applications questions such as: How many people are being served? What are the hours of operation? What’s the age range of the beneficiaries? And how much total moolah is being requested for your program?
Team Co-Chair Josh Van Hoesen gave each applicant organization’s spokesperson a maximum of ten minutes to make the case before about 30 attendees, of whom approximately half (based on minimum attendance) were voting members.
• Julie Lister of Solar Youth said her group, which trains kids in leadership and vocational skills, often through environmental projects, is seeking a $30,000 grant. The funding will enable the group, which works in high-poverty neighborhoods of New Haven, to hire an additional staffer and that will result in 30 more kids being served in the course of the coming year.
Westville Alder Adam Marchand and other CMT members listen to the presentations.
• Mechele Ellis, founder of Creative Me Day Care on Blake Street, is applying for $20,000 to help families enroll in their day and now evening day care programs who are unable to pay the required fee beyond the subsidy. Just certified to conduct an evening care program, Creative Me, which serves kids from six weeks to 12 years old, keeps its doors open until midnight taking care of kids whose parents often work two and three jobs to make ends meet.
• Common Ground Director of Development Kimball Cartwright said Common Ground is applying for $20,000 to support a Schoolyard Program. It works with staff of 23 schools in the area to design and develop school gardens.
• Staff from Children’s Community Programs, which is getting ready to move into renovated offices at 845 – 847 Whalley Ave., seek $38,000 to help young people get into job training programs. The request funds will help a new crew of tutors fill in educational gaps and provide mental health interventions.
• Jocelyn Antunes and T.J. Ciocca were on hand on behalf of the housing-for-the-homeless agency New Reach. New Reach is seeking two grants, technically not CDBG but also administered through the city: $335,000 from the federal Housing Opportunities for Persons with HIV/AIDs program (HOPWA); and $90,000 to help stabilize people financially when they come out of shelters and get them prepared, after a maximum of a year, to be on their own.
All the votes, indicated by a raising throughout the room of three-by-five green cards (unrelated to immigration), were unanimous.