CACF Announces Spring 2010 Community Endowment Grants
On June 7, 2010 the CACF Governing Board approved the following grants totaling approximately $200,000 from the Spring Community Endowment Grant Cycle:
1. Blue Ridge Area Food Bank: $100,000 to purchase a vehicle to launch a mobile food pantry initiative to increase outreach to food insecure people. The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank provides food to an average of 85,000 people each month through a network of food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters across 25 counties and nine cities. In the Charlottesville area, the Food Bank is distributing enough food for 1.4 million meals this year. With the new mobile food pantry BRAFB expects to increase that amount by more than 40% in Charlottesville and the counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Nelson, Orange and Greene.
2. Local Food Hub: $57,185 for the Local and Fresh for the Hungry Program. The Local Food Hub works to build a strong network of productive family farms and an established distribution system for healthy local foods, including getting fresh produce from local farms distributed to community groups and food banks.
3. Smart Beginnings Initiative: a $42,000 grant to Smart Beginnings - a private/public partnership made up of businesses, schools and community agencies working together to make Charlottesville and Albemarle a place where children grow up healthy and arrive at school prepared to succeed. The grant includes funding for:
a. Jefferson Area CHIP: $16,000 to the Home Visiting Collaborative for early developmental screenings.
b. Children Youth and Family Services: $10,000 to support the Child Care Quality program that works to improve access to, and the quality of child care for, young children.
c. Arc of the Piedmont: $8,000 to support a Latino Family Support Worker for the Infant Development Project.
d. United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area: $8,000 for the Transition to Kindergarten Partnership to improve school readiness through summer kindergarten camps and collaborative work between kindergarten teachers and child care center staff.
Thanks to a gift from the Batten Family Fund in CACF last fall, the Community Foundation has increased its grantmaking dollars and expanded its Community Endowment grant program to place a greater emphasis on larger, strategic grants. Annual allocations from the Community Endowment will increase from $280,000 to $573,000 a year.