By Mark Ambrogi
The Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana’s one-to-one mentoring program is one of several Hamilton County programs awarded funds from the Legacy Fund since December.
The Legacy Fund, a Central Indiana Community Foundation affiliate serving Hamilton County, awarded $83,500 in December to the nonprofits, including $15,000 to BBBSCI. Its board of directors voted in late March to award an additional $117,000 to 10 local nonprofits, including Chaucie’s Place, Ben’s Ranch Foundation, Nickel Plate Arts and Englishton Park.
The BBBSCI one-to-one mentoring program is described as providing children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships to improve their lives.
“The grant will primarily help us continue a strong level of service to Hamilton County youth and further strengthen our relationship with the Youth Assistance Program,” said Darcey Palmer-Shultz, BBBSCI executive director. “The partnership with YAP has grown over the last few years and we now receive more youth referrals through this organization. This has resulted in an expansion of service to youth who face more risk factors than the general population of youth served in our organization.”
The Trinity Free Clinic received the largest grant of $20,000. The clinic, which sees a growing number of low-income, uninsured patients, plans to expand the staff and the clinic hours to help service more patients.
The Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre received the smallest grant of $3,000 to help with its program of giving veterans tickets.
Ivy Heazeltine, the dance theatre’s board president, said they have worked with Vet Tix, which supplies donated tickets to various events for veterans.
“Individual or organizations can provide tickets at vettix.org so veterans in the area can claim them and the donors get receipts for theirs,” Heazeltine said. “Number one to expose more patrons to our performances and also provide an opportunity to military veterans and their families to see live performances. I think they are a wonderful organization. We’ve internally supplied the tickets, we thought it would be an opportunity for someone like the Legacy Fund to help us out with that. We get really positive feedback from the veterans that attend the shows.”
