New micro grants awarded to help fund food distribution, warm clothing, and grief training.
HYANNIS, MA - The Cape and Island
s United Way (CIUW) has announced micro grant awards for five outstanding programs led by nonprofits at A Baby Center, Truro Community Kitchen, Cape Wellness Collaborative, Harwich Children’s Fund, and Sharing Kindness.
The micro grant program offers one-time funding opportunities of up to $5,000 to support and encourage local volunteer projects. The goals of the program are to engage residents of all ages in projects that address local concerns, improve the community landscape and bring attention to the value and reward of volunteerism.
This round of micro grants includes:
A Baby Center - Fresh Produce Distribution
A Baby Center supplements critical basic needs that ensure the good health and safety of babies in need who live on Cape Cod and the Islands. The funds distributed will be used to help purchase fresh local farm produce from Cape Abilities and provide to low-income families with young children. Included in the produce pack are easy 5-minute recipes, and a healthy eating age-appropriate hand out.
Truro Community Kitchen - Ingredients and packaging for meals
As the Truro Community Kitchen helps increase food security in Truro by delivering free meals to those in need, funds will go directly towards purchasing ingredients and packaging for meals. These important tools will help the volunteers cook and package food as needed in Truro.
Cape Wellness Collaborative - Wellness Eats program
Many individuals undergoing active cancer treatment often do not have access to healthy, nutrient dense meals due to a lack of time, energy or financial hardship. Through the Wellness Eats program, clients are offered healthy meals in an effort to ease some of the burden of meal preparation, while ensuring they are receiving adequate nutrition throughout their cancer treatment. The funds from the micro grant will be used to support the Wellness Eats program, which offers 12 healthy, delicious, nutrient-dense and ready-to-eat meals to their clients facing cancer.
Harwich Children's Fund - Warm winter clothing project
The Harwich Children’s Fund is a nonprofit organization made up of a volunteer group of retired Monomoy teachers, administrators, and staff. The funds granted by the CIUW will go toward the Warm Winter Clothing Project which provides Harwich Children in need with new warm winter clothing, coats, shoes, and boots.
Sharing Kindness - Training for grief programming for children, youth and young adults
Since 2018, Sharing Kindness has nurtured a community dedicated to creating lasting change by offering multiple programs that acknowledge the complexity of loss and grief to Cape Codders of all ages. Micro grant funds awarded will be used to increase grief programming for children, youth and young adults.
The CIUW micro grant program is made possible by the Bilezikian Family Foundation, Eversource Charitable Foundation and Granite City Electric who have all provided generous funding to support and encourage volunteerism in the Cape Cod community.
Mark Skala, President & CEO of CIUW said “Our micro grant program is such an important way of engaging volunteers in our community. Volunteerism brings on lasting change on the Cape and Islands and we are proud to be able to support the work of these well-deserved micro grant recipients”.
With events season coming to a close, CIUW will shift their attention to Community Impact Grants and the planning that comes with the large distribution of grant funding to the community. To learn more about annual Community Impact Grants, and micro grants (distributed on a rolling basis) please visit The Cape and Islands United Way website: capeandislandsuw.org/grants