Feeding Seniors During Pandemic
KVSS is receiving requests, close to 25 per week, new seniors at risk due to COVID 19 and the stay at home order. We serve Kanawha Co. seniors. Some of which cannot have their caregivers come into the homes due to risk. We need to provide these new and congregate seniors (now at home) with 2 boxes of Shelf Stable Meals (each box has 5 meals contained in them) for the month of April 2020 and our funding is going to be depleted with this additional expense. Our cooks, dietary aides, and meal delivery drivers are essential to this process and would take the meals to the seniors who are now food insecure.
Medication Assistance for Impoverished Medically At-Risk Adults
The Medication Assistance project is a direct result of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to providing lifesaving medications to the 29,000 established patients served by WV Health Right, the clinic is also serving furloughed workers who are unable to obtain needed medicine. All six Foundation service counties will be served. Grant funds are being requested to purchase medications to ensure that chronically ill patients continue to have their maintenance medications during this crisis.
Protecting the Public’s Health: The Local Public Health Response to COVID-19 in Boone, Clay, Fayette, Lincoln and Putnam Counties.
WV is facing a pandemic and local health departments are on the front lines, prepared with the expertise and knowledge to respond and support their counties. However, as this pandemic is rapidly advancing and impacting Boone, Clay, Fayette, Lincoln, and Putnam counties in different ways and at different rates, such conditions strain even the most well-resourced agencies. This project will leverage funding to strengthen capacity, infrastructure, and public health response to ‘flatten the curve’ and save lives in each of the five counties. Activities include key public health functions of testing, disease investigation, isolation/quarantine, community education, and project evaluation.
COVID-19 Emergency Funding to Support Children in the Community
Zion is remaining open for business during the COVID-19 crisis. We have been asked to serve as a childcare facility not only for our normal clientele who are considered essential, but also for the children of those who work with Thomas Health Systems. Funding is a major hurtle. We also wish to serve a segment of children that are not being covered during this crisis-toddlers. We desire to have a call-in system available to provide hot food for these children the next day. We don’t want any child going hungry. Moreover, we want them to have good, home cooked, nutritious meals.
Food Access during COVID19
Community Care of West Virginia’s Clay County office will provide food vouchers for meat and produce at the Small Town Market in Clay. Clay County currently has no grocery store, food bank distributions and food pantries have been negatively impacted by COVID19, thus further limiting access to food.
Keeping Kanawha County Healthy Amidst a Pandemic
The Kanawha-Charleston Health Department is providing a robust response to COVID-19, keeping the public informed, safe, and tested. Before the first case was reported in WV, KCHD employees were working around the clock answering questions from concerned citizens and formulating plans with local and state officials. This response has strained resources and required shifting budgets because of new priorities. A grant from The Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation will enable the KCHD to provide necessary PPE and pay overtime for staff who are working 24/7. Kanawha County is the primary service area, but people in other locations may also receive assistance.
COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Initiative (C-19 EAI)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, KISRA anticipates receiving an increase in emergency aid requests from the community in due to this crisis. In order to proactively address these anticipated needs KISRA plans to assist providing emergency aid relief to Kanawha County residence. These needs include, but are not limited to, food, utility and chronic medication payment assistance.
Emergency Food Distribution- COVID19
“Mountaineer Food Bank will be providing approximately 1,650 emergency food boxes to Kanawha, Boone and Fayette Counties through 6 distributions over the course of a 4 month period. These distributions will be to member agencies and/or through mobile pantry distributions. Each distribution will serve 275 families in need, with an average of 4 people per household.
Additionaly, Mountaineer Food Bank will provide 8 agencies in Kanawha County, 2 agencies in Boone County and 6 agencies in Fayette County and 1 agency in Clay County with $1414.70 in credit to their MFB ordering accounts. This money will allow the agencies to order any extra food or supplies needed to meet the growing needs felt by all of our agencies during this pandemic.”
Essential Services for Seniors During COVID-19
Faith in Action of the Greater Kanawha Valley is adjusting our program during this pandemic to serve the greatest good. We are focusing our efforts on transporting seniors to MEDICALLY ESSENTIAL appointments only, and to ensuring access to groceries and supplies to those in need. We have temporarily waived our normal intake process for care receivers, opening our program to the community-at-large (ages 60+) in need.
Feeding The Hungry
Manna Meal is experiencing an unprecedented increase in the number of meals served. In the first three days of April, there was an 83% increase. Free breakfast and lunch are provided seven days a week, year-round. As other feeding programs closed, Manna Meal initiated dinner service two nights a week. To meet CDC requirements, the dining room was closed, and meals are served outside. Diners are the food insecure population of Kanawha County. Usually consisting of the homeless and impoverished, participants now include the recently unemployed. Funding will be used to purchase food to ensure that the hungry can eat.
Food Champions for Lincoln and Kanawha County Children and Families
Step By Step will provide ongoing food support for 70 families that are isolated from services along Francis and Big Ugly Creeks in southern Lincoln County. Afterschool and mentoring staff in Lincoln and Kanawha Counties will be able to maintain their relationships, while observing child safety guidelines of observable and interruptible activities to well over 200 students isolated by school closures and social distancing via letters, phone calls and online activities. Families served by these efforts will also receive seeds, plants, and baby chicks to build their capacity for food security during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
COVID19 Emergency Hunger Relief
The funds requested will be used to provide emergency hunger relief to those we serve in Boone, Kanawha, Lincoln and Putnam counties through the distribution of emergency food boxes to supplant the regular distributions of TEFAP and CSFP commodities, as well as other donated and purchased food products. We expect to provide 1,500 boxes of food that will provide 1,500 families with enough food for a week, through direct distribution or in partnership with our network of food pantries. These boxes will supplant any other hunger relief measures.
Peer Center – Showers and Laundry
In the midst of a pandemic, how do people maintain their hygiene? This project will fund staffing for a shower/laundry facility at 1001 Smith Street
Girl Scout Cookie Cares Program
The Girl Scout Cookie Program provides finances to support Girl Scout programming to girls and adult volunteers in our council, including over 1100 Girl Scouts in Kanawha County. As a result of COVID-19, our girls and council haven’t been able to sell cookie inventory because of social distancing restrictions and other safety precautions. We launched the Cookie Care campaign to continue supporting our girls and provide programming, while supporting the local community. The Cookie Cares program will be safely distribute Girl Scout cookies to first responders, healthcare workers, and local causes on the frontline of the crisis.
Emergency Aid Granting for Food Pantry and Backpack at Risen Lord
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of people who need food from our Food Pantry increase, from 150 to more than 200 families/month; for Backpack from 105 students now up to 1200 students/week in Clay county.
So we need more money to purchase more food from Mountaineer Food Bank, Sam’s Club, Kroger…ect for people and students.
COVID 19 Emergency Aid for Rent
After surviving treacherous, thousand-mile journeys to escape probable death in their home countries of DRC and Angola, two families seeking asylum in WV are now facing obstacles due to COVID 19. Start dates for jobs have been put on hold. Work hours have been drastically reduced. Asylum hearings have been postponed. WVIRM is supporting the families to a greater degree than previously budgeted. Our funds are being depleted rapidly and donations are dwindling, due to economic uncertainty. All funds received will be allocated toward the families’ rent for four months.
