The Stimulus at Work: Extending our reach with ARRA funding

It's easy to find funds from last year's stimulus package at work at The Heart. It's providing boxes of food to hungry families, empowering employees to become co-owners in their own businesses, supporting the fight to end poverty in our community and expanding programs agency-wide.

A little more than a year ago, Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – usually it's abbreviated ARRA or more commonly just called "the stimulus package." The law provided $787 billion for tax benefits, contracts, loans, grants and entitlements.

Like many other organizations, The Heart received a number of grants through the stimulus package. Below is a list highlighting just a few of the things we're accomplishing using ARRA funds:

• Feeding the Hungry. Thousands of working families rely on Sacred Heart to help put food on the table, and stimulus funding is supporting that effort. Twice a month, families can pick up a large "stimulus box" of food containing milk, eggs, 10 pounds of produce and various kinds of pasta, rice, beans as well as other non-perishable items. With these boxes, Sacred Heart can feed more people than ever before.
• Employee-Owned Co-ops. While The Heart is best known for providing essential services like the food pantry and clothing closet, it's also recently become an incubator for the expansion of Teamworks, a network of cooperatives owned by its workforce. Using stimulus dollars and support from The Heart, Teamworks is transforming low-wage service jobs like house cleaning into powerful social and economic development opportunities.
• Changing our Community. Sacred Heart has been combating the effects of poverty for more than 40 years. Now, with the help of stimulus funding, we're working to eliminate the causes of poverty. The Heart's Policy and Organizing team is expanding to help make sure marginalized communities have their voices heard, and our Community Involvement team is more focused than ever on educating the public using innovative programs like poverty simulations.

These are just a few of the things happening at Sacred Heart thanks in part to stimulus funding. We still need your help though; the stimulus package and its funds are set to begin expiring later this year. Only with your donations can we continue these projects and many others.