Women’s Giving Circle Awards $51,742 in Grants Locally

FINDLAY, OH (April 22, 2009) — Handbags That Help, a local women’s giving circle, will award $51,742 in grants to three local agencies at their meeting held Wednesday, April 22 at the Findlay Country Club. Giving circle members voted at their March meeting and selected Caughman Health Center, Hancock Christian Clearing House and Open Arms Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Services to receive grant funds.

Caughman Health Center received a grant of $11,142 to partially support a health educator social worker to coordinate education and programming for low incommunity-foundation.come pregnant women. The goal of the program is to reduce the percentage of low-birth weight babies and increase knowledge of well-baby care in areas such as immunization and nutrition. Hancock County’s current rate of low-birth weight babies is 8.8 percent, up from 6.6 percent only ten years ago. In 2006, 20.3 percent of Hancock County pregnant mothers indicated that they smoked. About 30 percent of Caughman’s current obstetric patients did not seek care until after their 30th week of pregnancy. Caughman Health Center is a subsidiary of Blanchard Valley Health System.

Hancock Christian Clearing House received a grant of $25,000 to support classes, supplies, training and wages for the “Partners in Progress” program. This program will address the need for HCCH clients to becommunity-foundation.come more self-sufficient and accountable for their own situation. Each client who requests assistance from the agency will be screened to determine the conditions that may have caused their need to seek help. Trained volunteers will then seek out solutions for the client’s issue. Hancock Christian Clearing House provides financial emergency assistance to residents of Hancock County for needs such as food, rent, utilities and medical prescriptions. This program will be mandatory before clients can be considered for additional assistance.

Open Arms Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Services received a grant of $15,600 to support a Program Assistant for Harmony House. Harmony House is a supervised visitation and exchange program designed to assist families who have experienced divorce, separation, violence or abuse. The goals of this program are to protect children from witnessing domestic disputes between parents during visitations and exchanges, to provide a safe and community-foundation.comfortable environment for children to visit with non-custodial parents or relatives, and to provide a neutral location and third party supervision of the transition from one parent to another for unsupervised visitation. Like many local agencies, Open Arms is facing reduced revenues and operating budget cuts. This grant will allow the agency to continue to provide these services at Harmony House.

Handbags That Help was formed in 2007 by a group of women community-foundation.committed to dramatically improving lives throughout the greater Hancock County community by collectively funding significant grants to charitable projects. The giving circle is open to all women in Hancock County. Each year, every dollar generated by Handbags That Help memberships is passed directly on to the community through grants voted on by the members. A $500 annual donation gives each member a single vote as to how the pooled funds will be awarded that year. This year, 160 local women were members of Handbags That Help.

The Handbags That Help women’s giving circle is supported by The Findlay-Hancock County Community Foundation. They are currently accepting memberships for 2009-2010. To join or for more information regarding Handbags That Help please contact The Community Foundation at 419-425-1100 or visit their website at www.community-foundation.com.