Stories of Community Support

More Stories of Community Support

One Way Farm Children’s Home

There is a growing epidemic in the United States of abandoned and abused children with no caring adult to look after them and provide them with a secure, warm environment in which to thrive. One Way Farm Children’s Home provides long-term and emergency housing for children in crisis in suburban Cincinnati. In addition to food and lodging, they provide education, medical, and therapeutic services to help the children gain the self-respect and the confidence they need to become well-balanced adults.

Due to budget constraints, One Way Farm cannot always provide the children with all that they would like. Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati was able to provide a grant of $900 to help them initiate an arts and crafts program, with field trips that would expose the children to the beauty of art and some more of the finer things in life.

A New Beginning

One of the most serious questions facing our criminal justice system is how to help inmates avoid becoming repeat offenders once they are released. Nancy Baxter and Rosie Merkt worked with the penal officials in Dearborn County, Indiana, to present a personal growth/self-help workshop in the county jail. The intent is to help the inmates regain (or, in many cases, gain for the first time) the self-esteem and inner peace necessary to function in the outside world. This is modeled after a program in Harrison County, Indiana, which has managed to successfully reduce the number of released inmates who return to jail within a couple of years of their release.

Although the county is very interested and excited about the program, they have no funds in this year’s budget to support it. Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati provided a grant of $1000 to help Nancy and Rosie purchase the supplies and materials needed to conduct the first several workshops.

Advocates for Respectful Long-Term Care

Advocates for healthy and respectful long-term care throughout the country use creative approaches to reach out to residents and their families, helping them to understand and exercise their rights and to create a positive experience of long-term care. One of their challenges is in developing a rapport with the residents who live in these facilities, especially those beginning to exhibit mental deterioration. Pro Seniors is a not-for-profit senior citizen advocacy and ombudsmen organization servicing five counties in the area of Cincinnati, Ohio. They are replicating a successful Pennsylvania project where volunteers gave teddy bears to nursing home residents. The teddy bears serve to build rapport between the volunteers and residents, since the residents more easily remember the volunteers on their next visit, associating the teddy bear with their caring interest.

Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati provided a $500 grant to Pro Seniors to purchase enough teddy bears for several of the nearly 200 nursing homes in the five-county area as a trial program. The stuffed teddy bears will wear shirts printed with Pro Seniors’ name and telephone number, to help the volunteers in their effort to develop relationships with these residents and their families.

Healthy Eating

The Cincinnati chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is to improve health by helping to restore nutrient-dense whole foods to modern households through education, research and activism. They encourage people to seek out products that are as good for the health of their bodies as they are for the health of the local economy and environment. They delight in directly supporting the people who produce the foods we all consume, and the producers are happy to know that they have enough local consumers to make a living doing what they love. It certainly adds a dimension of community when consumers are on a first-name basis with the people making their food. 

Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati provided a $550 grant to the Weston A. Price Foundation to design and print a local resource guide that will encourage families in the Greater Cincinnati area to buy directly from the farmers, producers, and retailers of products that are consistent with the goals of their organization. 

UNI-verse

The first annual Cincinnati UNI-verse was held on October 23, 2005 at Sawyer Point in downtown Cincinnati. The event's purpose was to encourage community growth and foster inter-community development, using art and music as a way to express these themes.

The program included stage performances, a mural contest and an area for local vendors. The performances included both local theater companies as well as local musicians, with acts ranging from jazz and poetry to a Middle Eastern / North African drum and dance ensemble.

The mural contest was designed to help build a stronger relationship between local artists and the city of Cincinnati. Six artists painted murals throughout the event, and one was chosen to paint a public mural in the heart of the city, sponsored by “Keep Cincinnati Beautiful.” UNI–verse was considered a huge success, with over 500 people in attendance for this inaugural event. Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati was happy to grant UNI-verse $400 to help with production costs.

Women Writing For a Change

“Women Writing For a Change” (WWFaC) was founded in Cincinnati 15 years ago by Mary Pierce Brosmer. Its mission is to help women find their voices through writing, and to do so by providing adult and teen classes, children’s camps, and other outreach programs.

This fall, WWFaC is collaborating with the Cincinnati Women’s Choir in a performance called “The Voices of Feminism."

Mary asked for a grant to hire a voice coach for the young women who would be reciting their heartfelt poetry in public — some for the first time. The coach would help to instill confidence and build self-esteem, as well as teach these women how to more powerfully use their voices to tell their stories in a public venue. Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati gave Mary $750 towards this project.

Knit One, Heal Too

Knit One, Heal Too is a dedicated, growing group of people who knit prayer shawls for individuals in the midst of a medical or spiritual challenge. The group meets for three hours once a week to knit, laugh and share stories with one another. Their beautiful prayer shawls are then blessed in a special service each Sunday morning.

Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati was honored to award Knit One, Heal Too a grant of $500, which was used to purchase knitting supplies and to help pay for the group’s website ( www.knitonehealtoo.org). As of this writing, eight special people have been blessed with the prayer shawls, with the first going to a woman with a rapidly progressing form of leukemia. At the time, her medical team felt they had done everything they could and recommended hospice as a next step. Within two weeks, the same medical team discovered that the progression of her disease had completely stopped, and today she is leading a full and active life.

Coming Together Through Fun

Kennedy Heights and Pleasant Ridge are adjacent communities in the city of Cincinnati. Originally vibrant middle-class communities, they have stagnated through apathy, negativity, and increasing crime rates over the past couple of decades.

Late last year, a Kennedy Heights resident, Richard Cooke, spearheaded the creation of Cincyfest, a non-profit organization with the goal of building community spirit through recreation and fun. Cincyfest is composed entirely of volunteers from these communities who have pooled their talents to increase enthusiasm and pride in the area. In December 2004, the group hosted Winterfest with live music, horse-drawn carriage rides, an art show and refreshments. The visual centerpiece of the evening was a mile-long candle luminaria that linked one community to the other. Residents of both communities, young and old, mingled together and had a great time.

Plans are underway for Summerfest 2005 and an even larger Winterfest this December. The two communities are working together as they haven’t done in years to make these events a huge success. They are already expanding the program to include other neighboring communities in the city. Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati gave Cincyfest $500 to develop a website (www.cincyfest.org) to help publicize the organization and coordinate its activities.

Glad House

Glad House is an agency dedicated to providing a holistic approach that helps children from underprivileged and impoverished homes to build resiliency and develop better coping skills. The majority of these children have parents who suffer from mental illness or have addictions. The mission of Glad House is to provide an after-school and summer program for children ages 5-12 that includes mental health counseling services for them and their families, alcohol and drug abuse prevention programs, academic tutoring and recreation.

In November, Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati was delighted to make a grant of $600 to Glad House to fund a music program presented by a multi-talented musician who is also a licensed counselor. The program will include drums, guitar, piano and voice, and one of its goals is to involve the parents in the children's "recital" and have them enjoy making music together. The director of Glad House sees this as the beginning of a permanent part of its program.

The Essence of Cincinnati

Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati has made its first grant to a multi-level program that we hope will run for many years! It went to two people who are embarking on a project called "The Essence of Cincinnati."

Deborah Ooten and Doris Jeffers are local photography buffs whose goal it is to capture the essence of the people who inhabit some of Cincinnati's most challenged and overlooked neighborhoods. Sharing our desire to celebrate the strength and determination of these families and individuals, Deb and Doris plan to exhibit the photographs in community centers, one neighborhood at time. Their vision includes involving the city to display these images more broadly, perhaps via banners that hang from streetlights. Our initial grant of $400 is covering the cost of a special class that will teach Deb and Doris how to build their first darkroom, as well as some of the initial costs for supplies.

One Voice

Bread for the Journey of Cincinnati is proud to announce its second grant, made to Betsy Besl, the founder of "One Voice: The Cheryl Dawson 3k Memorial Family Walk." Betsy was given $500 to promote this event.

On the afternoon of March 25, 2002, Cheryl Dawson was walking her usual route from work to a bus stop in downtown Cincinnati, when she was brutally murdered by her estranged husband. Betsy Besl was an auditory witness to this crime, which happened on the other side of a frosted window within just 15 feet of her desk.

Betsy Besl created "The Walk" to honor Cheryl's life and her efforts to protect her family from continued violence, as well as to ensure that something positive would come from this tragic event. Additionally, it was meant to raise awareness of the domestic violence issue, to promote prevention and alternatives, and to raise funds for support services for all the victims of this kind of violence. The event was held on September 26, 2004.