One-time American Rescue Plan awards give organizations growth opportunities in Boone County
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Social Service, food security and other types of organizations around Columbia and Boone County often are focused on making big bangs, but with small bucks.
Well, 26 Boone County Organizations will continue to make those significant impacts, but with considerable more bucks through one-time American Rescue Plan Act grants awarded by the Boone County Commission.
Love Columbia and Show-Me Central Habitat for Humanity celebrated its awards earlier in the week, but other significant awardees In2Action, Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture and the Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri, received their recognitions Thursday and Friday.
Boone County Commissioners Kip Kendrick, Justin Aldred and Janet Thompson at each of the award ceremonies Thursday and Friday expressed how transformative the impacts will be to the various organization that received the ARPA grants.
In2Action will get $1.2 million, CCUA will receive $1.5 million and the Food Bank will add $1 million to its budget.
In2Action
In2Action is a recovery and transitional program for people who were formerly incarcerated. It has both live-in transitional and recovery housing on Lakewood Drive and a drop-in resource center nearby known as The Reentry Opportunity Center, or The ROC, at 2108 Paris Road.
The ARPA grant will let In2Action find a permanent home for The ROC, expand its recovery respite care service and provide workforce development training via a forklift certification program, said Dan Hanneken, Executive Director and In2Action founder.
"I hope the decision you made with In2Action is providing a return long after we are gone. I'm not talking five or 10 years, I'm talking 50, 100 years," he said, choking back tears, referencing the Commission's decisions on ARPA awards. "I hope that for all of the (awards). We are going to make sure that this money is giving back to this community, 50, 100, 200 years from now."
After Hanneken's third release as an offender from the department of corrections in 2003, he made a vow that he would someday create a reentry and recovery program. By 2007 he had his master's degree in social work and became a licensed clinical social worker. From 2007 to 2011 he worked for the department of corrections as a reentry coordinator. In2Action got its start in 2011 through the support of The Crossing church and a donor, taking on its first members in 2012.
In2Action now operates across four acres and can house up to 55 people. It is a certified clinical outpatient treatment program with the Missouri Department of Mental Health as well as accredited by the National Association of Recovery Residences. The program is known to greatly reduce recidivism rates among the people it helps.
Its model has become nationally known, Thompson said, who sits on the Justice and Public Safety Steering Committee through the National Association of Counties.
"We have monthly Zoom calls and normally what we do is have someone talk for 10 minutes on their (various) programs. Dan agreed to come on the call and was prepared to talk for 10 minutes. He didn't get off the hot seat until the end of the meeting," she said.
She continues to get phone calls and emails wanting to know more about In2Action.
"This is a model that everyone in the country is looking at and saying, 'There is a way forward.' It is life altering for the people and their families in the community," Thompson said.
Also at the ceremony were The ROC Director Jessica Chambers, In2Action Managing Director D'Markus Thomas-Brown, Office Manager Bob Reynolds and In2Action board members Heather Hargrove, Scott Johnston and Doreen Dabney, who also is a live-in volunteer working with the program members.
Since In2Action has limited program space, The ROC is an additional resource for those who may not be in the In2Action program but still are looking for help. Chambers works to answer any question and provide any resource possible for members who drop-in, she said.
"I love working with the people. I'm a helper. I help people get identification, birth certificates, clothing, bikes, I refer people to mental health care, we help people get into sober-living housing, help fill out food-stamp applications, if someone doesn't know how to use the internet I will teach them," Chambers said. "If I don't know the resource, I will find the resource."
Hargrove become connected with In2Action after meeting Hanneken through a local Rotary Club. Rotary does a monthly dinner for In2Action and there was one year Hargrove also participated in a Christmas gift distribution through the Rotary.
"It is the first time some of these guys have ever gotten a gift," she said, taking a moment's pause as the emotion of that statement hit her.
Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture
While CCUA is its own entity, it works in tandem with the Columbia Farmers Market, Columbia Parks and recreation and by extension the Food Bank, from the Clary-Shy Park property. Apart from the MU Health Care Pavilion that the farmers market calls home, CCUA has an outdoor classroom, and small fields of produce it grows for the Food Bank.
The one thing it does not yet have is a welcome center, with offices for CCUA and farmers market staff, a commercial teaching kitchen and large open meeting space. That will change sometime next year when CCUA breaks ground on the center, supported in part by the ARPA award issued this week.
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"We've create a big onion with a lot of layers and there is a lot here," said CCUA Capital Campaign Director Adam Saunders about the partnerships and the work of CCUA. "It has been very humbling to be an organizer like this. ... The last piece of the puzzle is the 11,000-square foot community welcome center."
The award puts CCUA nearly at its funding finish line said Billy Polansky, CCUA executive director, in a phone call with the Tribune on Wednesday.
"There has been a lot of anticipation for these awards. It really gets us within striking distance. This (welcome center) is the last piece of building out the agriculture park. It opens the door for new programming," he said.
The kitchen also will allow CCUA to use the produce it grows and other products supplied by the Food Bank to create ready-to-cook meal kits, giving time back to Food Bank and pantry clients and a healthy alternative to what may seem quicker and easier via drive-thru fast food windows, said Lindsay Young Lopez, Food Bank president and CEO on Friday.
The welcome center also can operate as a lending library, but for gardening tools or other cooking equipment instead of books.
CCUA checks all the boxes of what is needed to receive the ARPA grant, Kendrick said.
"I cannot say how proud we are of the incredible things you are doing and how far you'll go ahead of us. Part of it is helping the next generation understand the importance of agriculture. Even if you live in an urban area, it does not separate you from food, it does not separate you from your ability to grow food," he said.
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Resident Arthur Mehrhoff was among the many who were at MU Health Care Pavilion Thursday morning celebrating the award.
"To have an anchor like this within the heart of the city is like an anchor pulling people back," he said about the welcome center and agriculture park Clary-Shy.
Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri
The application the commission received from the Food Bank hit all the notes of what an ARPA application requires, Thompson said Friday following a tour of the new Food Bank Market, formerly Central Pantry, by Lopez.
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The Food Bank Market increases the Central Pantry footprint from 3,000-square feet to 5,300-square-feet, will be set up much like a grocery store so guests can pick and choose what they want, and other services will be on site, including a 1,000-square foot clinic space for Compass Health, which will have its own entrance apart from the market.
With the new facility, which was a former Moser's Grocery store on Business Loop 70 West, it increases shelf stable food storage for the food bank by 11,000-square feet and cold storage (both refrigeration and freezer) by 8,000-square feet.
The ARPA award goes toward the capital campaign for the ongoing construction costs of the market, which has a tentative fall open date. The campaign was roughly 60% funded in May when the Food Bank announced the pantry name change. Cabinets now are going up in the community room space and the demonstration kitchen, which has views onto the main shopping floor and the community room.
"You have proven you will put the money to good use," Kendrick said.
The foundational hierarchy of needs starts with nutrition, Aldred said, addressing the programs provided by the Food Bank and its partnership with CCUA.
Charles Dunlap covers local government, community stories and other general subjects for the Tribune. You can reach him at cdunlap@columbiatribune.com or @CD_CDT on Twitter. Subscribe to support vital local journalism.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Big bucks mean big impact to social, food service organizations
