Please join the Westfield Foundation at their 40th annual meeting on Tuesday, May 5th. The meeting will be held in the Westfield Memorial Library meeting room at 7pm. This is the perfect opportunity for the public to find out more about the Westfield Foundation and how they have touched peoples’ lives for the past 40 years.
Joining the current trustees will be many cornerstone members, members of the public and many grant recipients. Guest speakers at the meeting will be Russ Triolo, CEO of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Union County, and Jonathan Phillips and Jackie Park Albaum from Groundwork Elizabeth. Both agencies have been recipients of funding the past year. These speakers have great passion for what they are doing. Their work is both impressive and inspiring.
In the first quarter for 2015, the Foundation granted over $43,000 to 8 local organizations. These funds will be used to fund summer camp scholarships for 12 Westfield students, complete a community gardens project, upgrade a sprinkler system for a local theater, provide funding for a caregiver’s respite program, provide funding for a program which trains high school staff to recognize and respond to grief in the classroom, and training for a mentoring program working with at-risk kids. Recipients include Habitat for Humanity, The Westfield Community Players, Camp Speers-Eljabar, Restore Ministries, Alzheimer’s Association, Groundwork Elizabeth, Master Gardener’s of Union County and Imagine, Inc.
During 2015, the Board of Trustees will continue to seek projects that advance new initiatives and will have a substantial impact on the community. The Foundation’s priority is capital projects and providing seed money to support new programs while continuing to provide smaller grants that assist existing agencies on an annual basis. One recent recipient of ‘seed money’ is the agency Roots and Wings ($40,000), an agency established to help young adults who have aged out of NJ’s foster care system.
Money to support the Foundation’s grants has been and continues to be provided by concerned and caring Westfield residents.