Grant award to help brighten future for Meadville youths

Nov. 15—Montgomery, Alabama; Eugene, Oregon; San Francisco, California, and ... Meadville?

A recent list of cities receiving pilot grants from the D.C.-based nonprofit Healthy Babies Bright Futures includes several well-known metropolises with more that 175,000 residents — and Meadville.

Five cities received a total of $105,000, with Meadville among those receiving $25,000, the highest award amount.

The grants, part of the organization's Bright Cities program, will be used to reduce neurotoxic exposures and to promote healthy early childhood development.

Even better, according to the nonprofit, participation in this pilot program lays the groundwork for larger amounts of federal funding.

"We're excited about what this can do for our city," said Jackie Roberson, executive director of Family & Community Christian Association, "by bridging the gap to provide a healthy environment for children and adults and making sure they have what they need to thrive."

FCCA will partner with the city of Meadville in administering the grant. Roberson said that educational programming as well as lead-exposure screening opportunities were being planned for the near future.

Mayor Jaime Kinder described the grant as "a little piece in a bigger puzzle" related to improving housing and general quality of life for city residents.

"It's a larger concern for the well-being of the citizens who live here," Kinder said. "That's truly what we're fighting for — a quality of life that's going to bring people into Meadville, and make people safe and healthy in our town."

Kinder initiated local interest in the grant after learning of it at the Mayors Innovation Project summer meeting in Scranton, where she was a panelist for a discussion of rental housing and tenant protections.

After meeting Kyra Naumoff Shields, director of the grant program, there, Kinder worked with Roberson when she returned to Meadville to pursue the grant.

The grants fill a unique gap by helping cities secure additional funding from the historic amounts of federal dollars now available, Healthy Babies said in announcing the awards. Planning for these larger federal grants presents challenges for small, though those are often the cities most in need of additional funding.

"It is time-consuming and challenging for busy city staff to engage in the application process for available federal funding, particularly funding that is part of the Justice40 Initiative," Shields said, referring to the Biden administration's environmental justice effort. "We see it as essential to support pilot projects like the one in Meadville and develop partnerships to help cities and community-based organizations successfully procure federal funding and encourage others with this capacity to do the same."

FCCA hosted a spring 2022 presentation on lead paint exposure from the Lead Free Promise Project and local officials. According to the presentation, 72 percent of all homes in Crawford County were built before lead-based paint was banned for residential use in 1978, and that young children in the county are poisoned at a higher rate than the state average. In fact, the rate of children poisoned in Crawford County is similar to the rate of children poisoned in Flint, Michigan, at the height of the city's lead crisis.

Implementation of the grant is intended to fill a unique gap by helping cities secure additional funding from the historic amounts of federal dollars now available, according to Healthy Babies. Planning for these larger federal grants presents challenges for small cities, though those are often the cities most in need of additional funding.

Meadville will have a chance to gain additional funding from various other sources, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's grant programs designed to support city and community-based organization partnerships. Securing funding and resources is typically a challenge to reducing health disparities for children — particularly in cities that have been historically underfunded, such as Meadville, Montgomery and Pine Bluff, Arkansas, the fifth city to receive grant support.

Kinder was not surprised to see Meadville competing and succeeding with cities that are not only many times larger, but that also have significantly more resources in terms of staff size.

Key to that success, she said, was a partnership with Allegheny College. The grant application relied on research conducted at Allegheny by global health studies professor Caryl Waggett, according to Kinder, and development of the application was assisted by Allegheny student Asaad Bell.

"Those are big cities, but it doesn't mean we don't get to go after that money," she said.

And securing such funding, according to Kinder, is part of "a bigger story" that involves leveraging stronger community partnerships to attract additional support and investment.

"We have a picture of the future — it's a vision of what we want this city to be," Kinder said. "This is part of it — making sure we're supporting our nonprofits and they have the capacity to become everything they want to be and also making sure people are safe and healthy and have the ability to find their joy."

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.