Greater Green Bay Community Foundation hands out $616,500K
Project to aid the mentally ill is among those to get grants
Seven area projects, including a collaborative effort to help the mentally ill who are homeless or affected by domestic violence in Brown County, will share $616,500 in grants from the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation.
The organization announced award recipients at a Wednesday news conference.
The largest grant, worth $300,000 over the next three years, went to a collaborative project called MORE, which stands for Mental-health Outreach Resource Expansion.
The American Foundation for Counseling Services is leading the effort with several collaborators, including Golden House, House of Hope, NEW Community Clinic, NEW Community Shelter, St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter and the Bellin Psychiatric Center.
The collaboration could provide "synergy to the ongoing challenge of bringing lasting and meaningful change to the lives of our area's homeless, abused and disenfranchised," said Bob Johnson, executive director of the American Foundation for Counseling Services.
The grant will allow a full-time mental health therapist and a part-time nurse who can write prescriptions to regularly work at the collaborating facilities.
"Right now, it takes two to three months for us to get an appointment with a psychiatrist for our patients through the county," said Tami Frea, Program Director for NEW Community Shelter Inc. "It will be great help for us to have an advanced practice nurse prescriber to prescribe medications to those who need it more quickly."
Another recipient is the Dental Service Expansion Project, which will receive $100,000 in grant money this year, up to $75,000 the next year and up to $50,000 in 2010 to continue its effort to increase access to dental care for children and adults who receive medical assistance or are uninsured.
The project is a collaboration between Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the Brown County Oral Health Partnership.
The grant will pay for a dentist, two dental assistants and a dental hygienist at the NWTC Dentistry Clinic to provide services, other than teeth cleaning.
The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation announced last summer it received $250,000 in seed money from U.S. Oil and J.J. Keller Foundation and other partner donors. The foundation was charged with developing a plan to use the donations for needy children, families and senior citizens.