Jubilee Grants Committee Awards Funds to 50 Dioceses
Episcopal News Service. August 15, 2005 [081505-2-A]
The Jubilee Ministry Grants Committee reviewed grant requests from 101 Jubilee Ministry Center sites throughout the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion and awarded grants to 50 dioceses.
Grant applicants were allowed to apply for up to one grant per five Jubilee Centers in the diocese, provided it did not exceed three grant requests. Most of the requests averaged between $500-2500 and the grants awarded seldom exceed $5000.
"These amounts are usually too small for most granting foundations, so the granting of these funds through the Jubilee Grants Committee is literally a priceless service to the hundreds of outreach ministries in congregations that Executive Council has designated as official Jubilee Ministry Centers," said the Rev. Canon Carmen Guerrero, staff officer for Jubilee Ministry.
The 2005 Jubilee Grants budget was $150,000. Requests totaled $372,848.
The following dioceses were grant recipients:
* Louisiana
* Central New York
* Washington, D.C.
* Southern Ohio
* Dallas
* North Carolina
* Arizona
* West Tennessee
* Colombia
* Southeast Florida
* Bethlehem
* Central Pennsylvania
* South Carolina
* Kentucky
* Lexington
* Western Michigan
* Chicago
* San Diego
* New York
* Northern California
* Connecticut
* Oklahoma
* Southwest Florida
* East Tennessee
* Eastern Michigan
* Panama
* Southwestern Brazil
* Western Missouri
* Arkansas
* Puerto Rico
* Mississippi
* Los Angeles
* West Virginia
* Kansas
* Maryland
* Rio Grande
* Utah
* Honduras
* Rochester
* California
* Pittsburgh
* Colorado
* North Dakota
* Tennessee
* Northern Indiana
* Virgin Islands
* Atlanta
* Alabama
* Southwestern Virginia
* Minnesota
The ministry of these Centers includes outreach, advocacy, and empowerment.
The outreach grant requests include Homeless Drop-in Centers; a community garden; child care centers; an emergency utilities program; food/hunger ministries; elderly programs; tutoring; clothes and toys for children with AIDS; pre-schools for children; shelters; dental care; youth programs; camps for kids; a home repairs program; homeless emergency program; and food, prescriptions and lockers for homeless persons.
"Among the advocacy Jubilee programs that asked for a grant," Guerrero said, "we were able to make a grant available for a program for moratorium on executions, legal services for women and children, children in substance abuse families, and war displaced families in Colombia."
She also said that empowerment of people is another key aspect of Jubilee Ministry, "therefore programs with ministries that teach and empower people to begin to do for themselves were also awarded a grant."
These ministries include job training; education for children, youth, and adults; housing programs with life skills classes; parenting courses; self sufficiency classes for homeless persons now living in shelters; as well as seed money for a micro industry and several computer class programs for children and women.