Five LI community, faith-based groups get state education grants

Five Long Island community and faith-based organizations are among 47 statewide to receive grants from $1 million in CARES Act funding distributed by the state Education Department, Commissioner Betty A. Rosa has announced.

The state Education Department’s Community Schools Technical Assistance Centers will provide grants to the selected groups, totalling between $10,000 and $25,000 each, state officials said. Not-for-profits and faith-based groups were eligible to apply.

"As the pandemic raged in New York, we saw our historically most marginalized communities bear the brunt of the impact," said Board of Regents Chancellor Lester W. Young Jr. "Working with community and faith-based organizations in those areas, resources will now be available to the children and families that need them."

The grants will help provide support for families and children areas such as social emotional learning, mental health services; academic enrichment, digital literacy and family services.

The Long Island awardees are:

Food 4 Ur Soul International Kitchen, based in Amityville, $25,000; La Fuerza Unida Inc. in Nassau County, $15,068; Long Island Crisis Center, serving residents in Nassau and Suffolk, $25,000; The Opening Word Program in Suffolk, $25,000; and, Vision of Hope Caregivers in Nassau, $25,000.

Shannon Knox, founder and executive director of Food 4 Ur Soul, said the grant will enable her to purchase a food truck for her mobile kitchen.

"We would like to buy a food truck so we can go from town to town," Knox said. "We go from Hempstead to Riverhead and feed people. We don’t have a truck now, so I usually pack everything in a U-haul or my car."

Theresa Buhse, executive director of the Long Island Crisis Center, based in Bellmore, said the grant enables her organization to "hopefully expand" the community education program it has been operating for many years.

The groups are allowed to get the funding because the Education Department previously used CARES Act funding to amend two existing contracts with the Community Schools Technical Assistance Centers (CSTACs) at Fordham University and the Research Foundation for the State University of New York (RF SUNY) at Binghamton University to expand their scope of work.

State officials said the amended contracts now allow the technical centers to partner with "community and faith-based organizations, as well as school districts, to leverage the resources and experience of community-based partners to address the needs [of] children and families most adversely impacted by Coronavirus."

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie