Faith Alliance Coalition
President Drive Church of Christ, 3671 President Dr, Cincinnati, OH 45225
Cincinnati, OH 45225
Day of Hope 2022
Grant Application:
The Faith Alliance Coalition Team is requesting your support for a youth program aimed at getting children the proper supplies, mental and physical health needs and resources for school.
The 2022 Day of Hope event was back-to-school family event for the communities that are in most need in the Cincinnati areas of District 3. The event was planned as an drive through and walk through event slowly returning to the picnic event that is used to be pre-Covid. The event was to provide and serve families with full back packs to children, used clothing, hats and gloves, hygiene kits, dental health, and food boxes. The event was to show that our community can still thrive under difficult situations. Service agencies were also invited in order to cover a range of support for youth and families from mental health, parent support and spiritual support for the prolonged effects of Covid on the families. We planned on inviting a variety of agencies with the support of the Cincinnati Police and other local agencies. We anticipated about 200+ families attending the event. The overall goal was to support the youth of District 3 while building a sense of community and well being.
Grant Evaluation Report
The Day of Hope was a continued success of its members to collaborate and plan and execute an event. The faith organizations understand the importance of strong healthy families of the community. We stand together with our families, united with the leaders, the police and service agencies, all for their health and safety of the children. This was a very important year for the Day of Hope and the success of the community. We know as a collaborative group, we can grow stronger, form new relationships and expand the event for the following years to come. We did realize that we needed to do some additional planning in a few areas. We need to increase the number of backpacks and door prizes – we ran out 30 minutes before or time was up with people still in line. Rent a Portalet for the day. Contact more venders earlier to increase the participation of vendors and also remind venders that we are a drive through and walk through event so they need to be able to service both sides their tent – 4 people for most organizations. We also need to bring back the educational piece of our event that included guest speakers that focused on a topics for the youth (drugs, gun violence, bullying etc). This really addressed problematic issues that are destroying the community and families.
Results:
The Faith Alliance group was amazingly surprised with the number of families that came out to celebrate the return to school and rebuild their community. We planned for both a drive-thru and walk through event. But, as we discovered more people wanted to get out of their cars and socialize. We added snow cones and grilled hot dogs this year which became a huge success for returning to the picnic style event. We kept under budget with our food expenses. Knowing the expenses of the previous year and the rise in inflation, we kept close to our planned budget for school supplies, health kits, and coats. We were successful in publicizing the event. We had new flyers made in multiple languages to communicate to the public the location of the event. We had Channel 5 News at the event to interview and publicize the event. We gave out all the materials that we planned on giving. We gave approximately 250 backpacks filled with additional school supplies, hygiene kits. We did run out of supplies. We packed 315 boxes of food for each child with support from Childhood Food Solutions. The Book Bus was a new added agency that provided 200 free new books for children. We also had educational books on Health and Safety. We had prizes with household essentials and cleaning supplies for every 3rd or 4th car. We also offered a spiritual support prayer booth and included agencies covering mental health for families. We had strong support from the Cincinnati Police Department which has been a long standing partner in order to improve community relationships. We opened the year with a balance of $596.07 and with the $15,000 for the Dater Foundation we ended up with a balance after the event of $3645.24. After the event, we were able to use a large portion of the unused funds to purchase 146 new coats through Gabe’s retail store. Gabe’s provided a special opening just for the Faith Alliance so that we could shop and also receive an additional discount for the winter coats. With the Extra school supplies we donated to the teacher’s resource room at Roll Hill School and gratefully received by the resource coordinator. We donated the extra hot dogs and buns were donated to St. Leo’s Food Pantry. We the reminder of the balance from the grant, we ordered additional health kits for children of the Villages and St. Leo’s. In addition, we divide the remaining balance between St. Leo Food Pantry and Childhood Food Solutions as we did last year. Approved by consensus of the team. Overall the event was fruitful and demonstrated support to the District 3 community.
Website:
http://www.pdchurch.org/home Amount: $15,000
Date: June 2022
