Catholic Charities has received several new grant funds to help with several programs across the Diocese. Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida is on a roll recently with new grant funding awards: 1)Pensacola Regional Office - On Friday June 12, 2009 I received a call from Senator Bill Nelson’s office notifying and congratulating us that we have been awarded our first direct federal grant in the amount of $60,000 from the Assets for Independence (AFI) office of the Department of Health & Human Services for our newly development Individual Development Accounts (IDA) program. The IDA program is a savings match opportunity for people in poverty, specifically Circle Leaders in our Bridges to Circles program. For every dollar a Circles Leader saves in a newly opened bank account at Beach Community Bank in Pensacola, we will match them 2 dollars. Once savings goals are reached and clients complete certain program requirements, they can make withdrawals to purchase one of three things: a) new home; b) a new business; or c) post secondary education. 15% of the funding covers program and administrative costs. 2) Panama City Regional Office – On Tues. June 16, 2009 we received notification that St. Barnabas Transitional Housing program will receive a new $75,000 Emergency Shelter Grant from the state of Florida, Office of Homelessness, Department of Children & Families. 66% of the funding will be used to renovate and upgrade the facility and 44% will be used for shelter operations and staffing cost. These two grants are of course in addition to the $2.4M HPRP program we were recently awarded. We are still waiting for the announcement from Tallahassee regarding our $784,000 HPRP request and a $10,000 Challenge Grant request in Ft. Walton Beach. Notices on these grant requests should be forthcoming by the end of June. I am currently working on several other new grant opportunities as well. Finally, the Pensacola office is diligently working on the new Refugee Match grant program to grow our Immigration and Refugee program and a new Adoption Business Plan has been developed to grow the Adoption Program locally and across the Diocese. Please join me in acknowledging the hard work of all our Staff and Regional Directors, especially Donna Potts in Pensacola and Diane Williams in Panama City for their hard work positioning the agency to be the recipient of new grant funding opportunities. Mark Dufva, MS Executive Director 2009-06-18T19:24:11-05:00 2009-09-18T00:00:00-05:00 98 5 1 1 2009-06-18T00:00:00-05:00 2009-06-18T19:24:58-05:00 69