Stimulus-funded HACAP grants get small, local projects off the ground

A Hiawatha garden, help for low-income Washington County households and a gathering place in northwest Cedar Rapids are among more than a dozen neighborhood and small-town projects receiving grants this winter from the federal stimulus package.

“Five thousand dollars without having any strings attached doesn't really come around very often,” said Mitch Finn, deputy executive director of the Hawkeye Area Community Action Program, or HACAP.

Actually, staff will track each grant to ensure it's spent as promised and to assess its effectiveness, but how the money is spent is up to community groups in the six Eastern Iowa counties served by HACAP.

“Allowing local folks to come up with their own solutions is what this is all about,” Finn said.

In Brighton, that's a community newsletter inserted into residents' monthly water bills.

“Not everybody gets the same (news)paper, if any,” said Nancy Adrian, a Brighton volunteer. “(The newsletter has) been well-received.”

HACAP received $870,000 for anti-poverty measures and community improvement from the $787 billion stimulus package passed a year ago. The agency set aside $85,000 for the grants and held workshops to teach applicants how to apply and measure their results. For volunteers unfamiliar with the process, HACAP staff developed a single-page grant application.

After receiving $225,000 worth of requests, the agency has so far distributed $60,831. (See list of grant recipients, 14A.)

Colleen Lewis is using a $5,000 grant to set up the Cedar Hills Neighborhood Resource Center, modeled on a similar center already operating in the Mound View neighborhood in northeast Cedar Rapids. The center will occupy a storefront in the Cedar Hills Shopping Center, across Jacolyn Drive from St. Mark's United Methodist Church, 4700 Johnson Ave. NW.

The church now rents the space for youth activities. It's also used by the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program to prepare seniors' returns.

Lewis said the center's board will probably include members from the Cedar Hills Neighborhood Association, the church and neighborhood residents.

“The church has always been a place right in the community where community can happen,” said the Rev. Gary Hoyt, St. Mark's pastor.

Lewis' plans are “first of all, get all the things you need there. A coffeepot, to go with the sofa we're going to get there, so people can sit around and talk.”

The neighborhood center will have a computer terminal or two with Internet access for children doing homework or their parents' job searches.

With more than 800 low-income apartments in the neighborhood bounded by 16th Avenue SW, Edgewood Road, E Avenue NW and Stoney Point Road, Lewis plans to hand out a lot of bus tickets and information on area food pantries, clothing closets and social programs.

“Whatever the community needs, I'll do it,” Lewis said. “Networking makes things work.”

With the newsletter established, Brighton volunteers are planning a program to provide food packages to low-income families.

Adrian said those families must now go to Mount Pleasant. A local church has volunteered to house the program, which will provide a week's worth of food for four people for $30.

The Solon library will use its $5,000 grant to add one or two Internet terminals to its current eight, library director Kris Brown said.

“All libraries have noticed there's a lot more requests for computers, and anytime we have an opportunity to add to that, we'll do that,” she said.