BOSTON
- Monday, January 4, 2021 - Mayor Martin J. Walsh and the Boston Resiliency
Fund Steering Committee last week announced the Boston Resiliency Fund's
27th funding round. These grants represent over $780,000 in funding to 39
organizations in Boston, serving communities by increasing food and health
care access, supporting individuals facing homelessness and assisting
seniors. Since its launch at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, $34
million has been raised, and $30.3 million has been distributed to 366
organizations.
"The
Boston Resiliency Fund has been an essential provider to Boston nonprofits,
building a network of support to help the most vulnerable Bostonians. The
organizations granted have been vital to ensuring those most impacted by
the COVID-19 pandemic are supported," said Mayor Walsh. "Thank
you to every organization who has partnered with the City of Boston in
providing resources to our community."
Of
organizations receiving funding this round, 51 percent are led by a person
of color and 64 percent are led by a woman. In total, since the launch of
the Fund, 56 percent of the organizations that received funding are led by
a percent of color and 58 percent are led by a woman. Seventy-six percent
of organizations serve Dorchester, 70 percent serve Roxbury, 65 percent
serve Mattapan, and 56 percent serve Hyde Park, in addition to every other
neighborhood in Boston. To learn more about all Boston Resiliency Fund
grant recipients and their work, visit boston.gov/resiliency-grantees.
"Young
Man with a Plan, a four year mentoring program for Black and Latino males,
is so grateful to the City of Boston Resiliency Fund for our initial
funding and really honored to receive a second grant. Delivering direct
food relief fulfills a real need and also provides us the opportunity to
check in on the wellbeing of our young men and their families," said
Jaykyri Simpson, Director of Young Man with a Plan. "We see the
compound traumas of COVID, financial loss, racial injustice, and
neighborhood violence that our young men are experiencing. We engage in
what we call 'intrusive coaching'-- persistently talking to our kids about
their schoolwork, housing and food security, safety, and mental
health."
"Common
cathedral not only never closed; common cathedral was one of the very few
places where we had a voice in response to what was happening to us
all," said John, a common cathedral community member. "common
cathedral and its programs, common art and Boston Warm, gave our community
agency over our own lives within the pandemic. We saw these spaces become
not just a refuge from the disease, but a place to feel that we were
actively fighting back and retaining our identity. Boston Warm will now be
expanding to Fridays because the community of people experiencing
homelessness requested it, planned it and will be helping to run. We are
able to do this meaningful work because of the funding from the Boston
Resiliency Fund. We are grateful to the City!"
"We
are deeply honored by the recognition and faith the Boston Resiliency Fund
has shown in our work at Rose's Bounty. This year has been a tough year for
our neighbors already facing food insecurity, and for those who now find
themselves in this situation for the first time. Serving twice as many
families as we did in 2019, Rose's Bounty now serves over 950 Families per
month; feeding 2700+ individuals every month," said Darra Slagle,
Executive Director of Rose's Bounty. "With the help of this grant, we
can meet many of the increased costs associated with the pandemic. Rose's
Bounty has worked tirelessly to adapt to these changing times in order to
make sure that families and seniors in West Roxbury, Roslindale, Mattapan,
Jamaica Plain and Hyde Park have access to fresh and healthy
foods."
This funding round represents support for organizations
working to provide basic needs to youth, families and seniors, assist youth
and young adults facing homelessness, expand food access, and increase
accessibility to healthcare, including COVID-19 testing.
2Life Communities Inc.: 2Life Communities
will use this BRF grant to deliver emergency frozen meals and provide
emergency boxes containing produce, perishables, shelf-stable supplies, and
personal care items. They will also use the grant to connect residents
equitably to services, programming, and telehealth/telemedicine, and
conduct intensive disinfection to protect the health and safety of
residents and frontline essential workers.
Advocates: Advocates will
use this BRF grant to support families that care for a loved one who has a
developmental/intellectual disability. These families also have a reduced
income and are also balancing remote learning, while sometimes struggling
with a language barrier. With support from the Boston Resiliency
Fund, they will provide families with stipends to buy essential items like
food and hygiene products.
BEST
Corp. Hospitality Training: BEST Corp. will use this BRF grant
to provide grocery gift cards to families struggling because of the
pandemic. They will continue to use their Local 26 network to determine the
people most in need.
Boston BullPen Project, Inc.: The Boston BullPen
Project will use this BRF grant to continue to help people facing eviction,
homelessness, food insecurity, technology deficits and medical
crises.
Boston Girls Empowerment Network: Boston Girls
Empowerment Network will use this BRF grant to support immigrant women ages
18-40, who are financially impacted by the COVID-19 Crisis. BGEN will
expand its staff by hiring a women's service coordinator and work across
ethnic communities to create support services, which includes food and
personal/feminine hygiene products distribution for undocumented women who
are unemployed, underemployed and are not be able to collect state or
federal unemployment benefits.
Boston
Missionary Baptist Community Center Inc.: Boston Missionary
Baptist Community Center will use this BRF grant to distribute food from
their pantry in Roxbury, deliver food door-to-door throughout the week to
seniors and people with disabilities, and work in partnership with local
partners who host distribution at locations around Boston and nearby
communities. In addition, they will train and deploy volunteers to provide
nutrition guidance and respond to signs of COVID-19 and advise them about
social distancing.
Breaktime: Breaktime will
use this BRF grant to support young adults experiencing homelessness with
living-wage employment and deliver groceries to families in need through
their non-profit partners.
Building Audacity: Building Audacity's
will use this BRF grant to offset costs of their grocery delivery program.
Call for Action: Call for Action will use this BRF grant for outreach
and educational workshops in Spanish about COVID-19 testing, prevention,
and education. These materials will also include information about the
vaccine once it is available to the general public. They will create
digital content and do educational workshops, forums, and digital support
groups.
Cape Verdean
Association of Boston: The Cape Verdean Association of Boston will use
this BRF grant to partner with local restaurants and grocery stores to
provide an ethnically-appropriate hot dinner to seniors. In addition, they
will be working with low-income families, undocumented immigrants, and the
older Bostonians to connect them to City and State resources and provide
them with weekly grocery bags filled with fresh produce and food, gift
cards, interpretation, and translation services about COVID-19 information.
Catholic
Charitable Bureau of the Archdiocese of Boston, Inc.: Catholic Charities
will use BRF funding to support staff who are packing and distributing food
bags to more than 1,500 households at their pantries in Dorchester and in
the South End. The two pantries distribute approximately 80,000 pounds of
food each week.
Catie's Closet, Inc: Catie's Closet
will use the BRF to fund basic essentials, including toiletries, feminine
products, socks, underwear and clothing. This will help close gaps in
product availability for people of color by improving and meeting the need
for culturally-appropriate products.
Children's
Services of Roxbury: Children's Services of Roxbury will use this Boston
Resiliency Fund grant to support the families in their homeless shelters,
home-based childcare programs, and their behavioral health programs. In
addition, this grant will support education and access to COVID-19 testing,
deliver gift cards to families to purchase food and basic needs, and provide
bags of groceries.
City Mission, Inc.: City Mission
will use this BRF grant to purchase online gift cards for groceries and
essential items and distribute the cards to the families on their waiting
list. In addition, City Mission will provide information about additional
available community resources, and support families facing special
circumstances or challenges.
Common Cathedral: Common Cathedral will
use this BRF grant to expand their Boston Warm day center to include
Fridays from January through April. The day center provides people
experiencing homelessness access to bathrooms, food, essential supplies and
a safe space to warm up.
Community Servings: Community
Servings will use this BRF grant to cover raw food costs, packaging, and
home-delivery of 650 medically-tailored Blizzard Boxes, containing a week's
worth of shelf-stable meals, a recipe booklet to support understanding of
the box contents and easy meal preparation. Each box will also contain
disposable masks. In addition, Community Servings will use this BRF grant
to support safety and sanitation costs, including weekly electrostatic
cleaning of their kitchens and delivery vans and masks for their kitchen
staff, drivers, and volunteers.
Dignity Matters, Inc.: Dignity Matters will
use this BRF grant to distribute menstrual care products to women in Boston
through their COVID-19 partners. They will allocate the items purchased
through this grant to the Greater Boston YMCA, Family Aid Boston and
Catie's Closet/BPS Emergency Centers.
Elizabeth Stone House: Elizabeth Stone
House will use the BRF grant to ensure the safety and emergency daily needs
for clients including food, prescription medicine, personal hygiene
products, and disinfection services. In addition, the grant will ensure the
safety of clients and staff from COVID-19 exposure and to ensure the
continuity of emergency staff payments for direct service on-site staff at
their emergency shelter /transitional housing location.
FamilyAid Boston: FamilyAid Boston
will use the BRF grant to continue to deliver high-quality fresh food to
870 homeless and unstably-housed children and parents, while keeping them
safe from community spread of the coronavirus.
Families First Parenting Programs,
Inc: Families First will use this BRF grant to provide grocery
store gift cards for parents attending their programming to purchase food
and basic needs items.
The First Baptist Church in Jamaica
Plain: The First Church in Jamaica Plain will use this BRF
grant to purchase additional food, equipment and supplies for the pantry.
Additionally, this grant will support the Food Pantry Program Coordinator,
who works directly with food insecure households to assess needs and
oversees volunteers and the delivery of groceries.
Hyde Square Task Force: Hyde Square Task Force
will use this BRF grant to support their ongoing efforts to provide youth
and low-income families of color with gift cards that enable them to
purchase food and groceries.
Livable Streets Alliance: This BRF grant will
provide continued support for the LivableStreets "ChatBot," an
interactive tool that monitors Boston EMS staff for COVID-like illness
symptoms. This tool is important for Boston EMS's infection control doctors
and nurses to keep the front-line EMTs and paramedics safe. The
"ChatBot" tool provides early notification of symptoms, a key to
keeping the department safe, and to decrease the spread of the virus.
Love Your Menses, Inc.: Love Your Menses will
continue providing menstrual care packages with essential menstrual hygiene
items in a reusable bag for people in need. They will also install period
product dispensers in community organizations, such as homeless shelters,
youth organizations, and community health centers across the city so people
can easily access products.
Presentation
School Foundation Community Center: Presentation School
Foundation Community Center will use this Boston Resiliency Fund grant to
support the "Allston-Brighton Pandemic Relief Center" in response
to a need for storage space for pandemic relief items. This grant will
enable the PSF Community Center to make 750 square feet of space available
to Allston-Brighton organizations seeking space to store and disseminate
pandemic relief items including, but not limited to, food, diapers,
toiletries, school supplies.
Rosie's Place: Rosie's Place
will use this BRF grant to continue to serve hundreds of women experiencing
homelessness each day by providing prepared and to-go meals from their
dining room, and a week's worth of groceries from their food
pantry.
Rose's Bounty COVID Surge Support: Rose's Bounty will use
this BRF grant to procure food as well as to purchase COVID-19 safety
items.
Rounding the Bases: Rounding the Bases will use this BRF
grant to conduct virtual training classes to teach seniors basic computer
skills.
Silver Lining Mentoring: Silver Lining
Mentoring will use this BRF grant to provide financial help for basic
utility bills and food for 50 families.
Sociedad Latina: Sociedad Latina will
use this BRF grant to pay for their alumni Youth Leaders who outreach in
Mission Hill/Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. The Youth Leaders will
distribute Personal Protective Equipment and bilingual reading materials on
the importance of mask wearing and social distancing. This campaign targets
young Latinos and immigrants and their families to take measures to prevent
the spread of COVID-19 and contribute to keeping their community
healthy.
The
South Boston Association of Non-Profits (SBANP): The South Boston
Association of Non-Profits will bring together nine partner organizations
and use the BRF grant to bring fresh food, perishable and non-perishable
food items, grocery store gift cards, and prepared meals to vulnerable
populations of children, families and seniors in South Boston. Those nine
organizations will also help provide health, safety and hygiene items such
as diapers, wipes, hand sanitizer, and cleaning products to families and
seniors who are struggling to access them during the pandemic.
South Boston en Accion, Inc.: South Boston en Accion
will use this BRF grant to purchase needed supplies, create PPE kits,
available at two central distribution points at Boston Housing Authority
buildings in South Boston. Kits will contain disposable masks, hand
sanitizer, hand soap, disinfectant wipes, and useful
information.
St. Stephen's Youth Programs: St. Stephen's Youth
Programs will use the BRF grant to support families through cash assistance
and grocery store gift cards.
Tifereth Raphael Inc: Tifereth Raphael will use this BRF grant
to support storage costs that will help optimize their kosher food pantry
facility in Brighton.
We
Are Better Together The Warren Daniel Hairston Project: We Are Better Together
will use this BRF grant to identify, reach out, and engage the individuals
and families at risk of domestic or other violence. They will provide
information on community forums/workshops and existing community resources
to address violence, trauma and community healing. We Are Better Together
will also provide gift cards and essential supplies to people in
need.
West End House Inc.: Due to the loss of
USDA Farmers to Families boxes, West End House will use this BRF grant to
support the purchase of similar produce boxes from Fresh Truck, as well as
food purchases from Greater Boston Food Bank, and the costs associated with
delivering and storing food. Groceries will be distributed every two weeks
through volunteer led delivery to elderly or disabled individuals, or
families without transportation.
Wilahmena's Place Inc.: Wilahmena's Place Inc. will use this BRF
grant to sustain their efforts to provide non-perishables, fresh fruit and
vegetables, toiletries, sanitizer, soap, cleaning supplies and gift cards
to students, seniors and families in need, with a focus on the Grove Hall
neighborhood.
Young Man with a Plan: Young Man with a Plan
will use this BRF grant to deliver food gift cards and food to students and
families.
Youth Vybz Inc.: Youth Vybz Inc. will use the BRF for fresh vegetable
pre-packaged food care boxes, PPE and gift cards.
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