SEG Impact Stories 2022

2022 Impact Stories

AS TOLD BY NONPROFITS

INSPIRING AND IMPORTANT WORK

Since late 2021, the PS It Matters Nonprofit Engagement Team has conducted interviews with over 70 nonprofits that have benefited from Bags 4 My Cause or Bloomin’ 4 Good. The resulting Impact Stories highlight each nonprofit’s mission, services they provide and the needs they fill. Learning from these organizations firsthand is inspiring and emphasizes the importance of the Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs and impact on the local SEG community.

Enclosed are four stories of nonprofits that have benefited from the SEG Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs. More stories can be found on the SEG Program Website: seg.2givelocal.com/stories

In 2023, the Nonprofit Engagement Team will continue conversations with nonprofits creating additional Impact Stories—at least one a month—and feedback calls with 200 to 300 organizations. These calls will focus on how nonprofits interact with the program, the marketing tools they use, additional tools they would like to see on the Program Website and how the Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs fit into their overall fundraising strategy. We plan to adjust our outreach to nonprofits based on feedback and report overall findings in early 2024.

We look forward to continuing the success of the SEG Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs in 2023. We truly value your partnership and the impact we have together on local nonprofits in your banner’s footprint. Thank you for contributing to the positive outcomes for SEG, PS It Matters and the local community!

Ending hunger across all ages with kindness, dignity and compassion.

MEALS ON WHEELS SOUTH FLORIDA

In response to an increasing need to address hunger across generations, Meals on Wheels South Florida expanded its mission to serve populations beyond seniors. Winn-Dixie has supported this nonprofit through its Bloomin’ 4 Good and Community Bag Programs and Fresco y Más through its Community Bag Program.

Tell us about the Meals on Wheels South Florida.

We were founded in 1984, so we’ve been at it for 36 years. Meals on Wheels South Florida began as, and continues to be, the only federally funded, senior nutrition provider for Broward County in South Florida.

Our mission has evolved somewhat over the years. We’ve always been senior-centric, but we’ve also developed into serving other populations. In 2016, we

changed our mission statement to “ending hunger across all ages with kindness, dignity, and compassion.”

The lion’s share, about 85%, of what we do is serving seniors. We provide hot meals in 34 locations throughout Broward County daily for seniors. Anybody 60 years or older can get a hot meal. During Covid, we had to shut down those locations, but they’re slowly coming back online, though operating at lower capacity than they were before. For example, some sites had 250 participants and are now at only 50 to 60. So, it’s a process.

We also have our home-delivered meal program, which is what most people think of when they think of Meals on Wheels. We serve about 2000 clients daily through that program, and our volunteers deliver a week’s worth of frozen meals in a box to our clients every morning. Each of those meals is one-third of the recommended daily intake for a senior.

Our volunteers are our eyes and ears and at the heart of everything we do. We obviously could not do what we do without our 500 volunteers. Every morning, at least 250 of them are out delivering meals. And the relationships our volunteers form with their clients really sets us apart from a Door Dash-type of delivery. We pride ourselves on serving more than a meal. We also connect those clients to the outside world. Those clients are homebound, meaning they can’t leave their homes without some physical assistance. So, our volunteers are often the only people those seniors see in a given week.

The volunteers report back to us if they see anything that they think we need to address. Our staff members

also deliver meals. One client I delivered to had been in the hospital seven times over the course of two months. It turned out she kept falling while trying to get into her bathtub. We removed that bathtub and put in a step-in shower with shower bars; she has not fallen since. That was two years ago.

It’s about the meals but also about all the other things. For example, our volunteers saw that some of the clients we were feeding who had pets were sharing their meals with their pets because they couldn’t afford or couldn’t get dog or cat food.

So, we started our meals program for companion pets. We currently provide 600 seniors with a month’s supply of dog or cat food. We also do in-home veterinary care and grooming because our seniors can’t groom their pets, and they can’t get them to the vet.

And then eight years ago, the Department of Agriculture here in the state of Florida put out a challenge to feed kids during the summer. These are the kids who rely on the school lunch program for what might be the only good meal they get in a day. Since we are the meal experts, we said, let us take a stab at increasing participation in the summer feeding program. We started with ten sites as a pilot project, feeding about 600 kids daily through 10 weeks of summer. Flash forward eight years, and now we’re serving 10,000 kids in 53 sites all summer.

That’s why our mission has grown. Hunger is everywhere, and it’s getting worse now with inflation.

What sets you apart from other nonprofits in your community?

Senior hunger has been around forever, but I think during the pandemic, people understood what our seniors face daily, being homebound and hungry.

We’ve been addressing senior hunger in South Florida for 36 years and Meals on Wheels, in general, has for 100 years, but nobody else in this arena does what we can do. We have 98% name recognition across the country. The 5,000 Meals on Wheels programs in the

United States are finally banding together, not just for name recognition but also for being a social influence. We’re more of a movement now than in previous years because demographics have shifted so much. All the boomers are now in their 60s and 70s. One in six seniors over 60 is at risk of hunger in this country.

People finally realize that nutrition is healthcare; it’s finally taking root. We’ve been singing that song for ages, but people now really understand if you don’t get a healthy meal, you’re not going to stay healthy. So, we’re focusing on integrating with the healthcare system. We’re really taking the front stage in that conversation.

But funds are limited. Seventy-five percent of our budget comes through a federal grant under the Older Americans Act, which turned 50 years old this year.

Hunger is everywhere, and it’s getting worse now with inflation.

And they haven’t revised all of the regulations in that for the last 40 years. So, we’re also at the forefront of the conversation on those revisions, but it’s still capped. We started our waiting list back in 2013 when the sequestration cuts hit, and at the time, we had over 250 people on the waiting list. Flash forward to today, and we have 1900 people on a waiting list. And as morbid as it sounds, I often say that a large number of those people won’t live to see their first meal delivered. So, we have to rethink how we operate and are taking steps to access additional funding to get those people off our waiting list and get them served.

meantime, we were able to provide her with pureed meals until she could get her dental work done. She had lost a lot of weight and needed to get some calories. So, we were able to give her pureed meals and liquid supplements like Boost to get her weight back up.

Olga had not left the house in ages; she couldn’t even remember the last time she did. She got her teeth fixed, and then we switched her back to regular meals. When her strength returned and Olga could go out, we suggested she attend one of our congregate dining sites near her home. We arranged transportation for her to get there to try it out, and she just loved it! Now she goes there every day, Monday through Friday, and she’s got all kinds of friends there that she looks forward to seeing. So, her life was transformed.

Please tell us a story that illustrates your organization’s good work.

A retired schoolteacher by the name of Olga called us out of desperation. She is someone who never asked for help; she was always the one that volunteered to help other people.

Olga had real issues with being able to eat. Her dental problems infected her jaw, and she couldn’t chew anything. When she called, we connected her with our registered dietician Alex. He went over to her house and did a full assessment with her to determine what she was eating, what she couldn’t eat and what her challenges were. We also connected her with dentists who could care for some of her dental problems. But in the

I’ve been in nonprofit management for 35 years in various shapes and forms, and I’ve never seen a volunteer pool like the one we have that is so committed. Even during the effects of Hurricane Ian here in southeast Florida, our volunteers refused not to deliver. They were all out there bright and early, just like they always are, delivering those meals because their clients needed them. We made sure that every delivery made it through the storm.

What is your most outstanding contribution to the community?

What do you want people to know about Meals on Wheels South Florida?

It’s important for everyone to understand there are so

It’s important for everyone to understand there are so many unmet needs in our society.

many unmet needs in our society. Meals on Wheels South Florida fills a piece of that. But I think that when people look at seniors as being homebound and hungry, that’s something nobody wants to see or experience or even hear about because it is so depressing. But I think we’re all closer to that than we care to realize. We could all end up in that situation with one accident, one fall or one broken bone.

I think people need to understand better what older adults have to offer to all of us as they’re aging in place. They’ve got great life stories, experiences and knowledge that I don’t think we cherish in this country as is in some other countries. The idea of aging and respecting and supporting those people who got us to where we are is something that really needs to be elevated.

How will you use the funds raised

from the Bloomin’ 4 Good and Community Bag programs?

When the funds come in from the Bloomin’ 4 Good and Community Bag programs, we put them into a reserve where we can serve meals to people who would otherwise be stuck on the waiting list. We’re able to provide the most desperately in need with meals until they can get off the waiting list.

Here’s a good example. There was a woman who was the caregiver for her bedbound husband. She fell and broke her hip; when she got out of the hospital, she was also bedbound. He was able to receive meals through his Medicaid-managed long-term care, but

she couldn’t get any meals and couldn’t stand up to fix her meals; she was desperate. We provided her with a weekly delivery of meals that her aid could heat up for her when she needed them. She was able to get better over about five weeks, and then she could get out of bed and take care of her husband again. If she hadn’t received the nutrition from Meals on Wheels, she would not have been able to recuperate so quickly.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I think the Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good programs are fantastic and great ways for people to learn about us. I shop at Fresco y Más, and I’ve seen it in action. At the checkout stand, people asked who benefited from this program, and the cashier knew Meals on Wheels was one of the beneficiaries. Having frontline people in the stores be able to tell what this is all about is amazing. It speaks volumes about the management of the store. Seeing it firsthand was pretty cool!

Mark Adler is Executive Director of Meals on Wheels South Florida. He has led the organization in this capacity since January 2013.

Adjusting to life after loss.

CHILDREN’S BEREAVEMENT CENTER

Children’s Bereavement Center’s mission is to empower children and adults to adjust to life after the loss of a loved one within a supportive community of their peers and to promote healthful grief, healing and growth. The Winn-Dixie Community Bag Program has supported this nonprofit organization.

Tell us about the Children’s Bereavement Center.

The Children’s Bereavement Center (CBC) was founded in 1999 by two women who were seeing many children and teens dealing with the loss of a loved one in their clinical psychology practices. One was Dr. Mindy Cassel, who is still with CBC as an Advisor and as a Board member. They started very small with only one grief support group in someone’s house on a card table.

By the end the first year, there were a hundred kids joining the support groups. What they soon learned was that they needed to expand and offer a full family model, which is what we have today.

was possible, especially as you see and hear what they’ve been through. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting dressed or brushing their hair, and it might have taken six months for that. That’s progress. That’s growth. And it’s a beautiful thing.

In March 2020, we pivoted, as many organizations did, to online. We used to hold our groups in small private schools, public schools, charter schools, churches and synagogues in South Florida throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Once we pivoted to online, what we found is that we were drawing our attendance from around the country, and we’ve actually stayed that way today. In fact, in the group I was leading last night, we had a gentleman from New York, and it’s not rare anymore.

CBC serves children ages four and up, including teens, and young adults and adults who have experienced a loss. Period. If they’ve experienced a loss of a loved one, whether it’s a spouse, a parent, or close friend, and whether it was yesterday, or it was five years ago, people can come to our support groups. We offer free grief support groups to anyone who has experienced a loss for as long as they want to come.

What’s incredible about the support groups is that over time, people see positive growth in the group members and in themselves, once they start attending groups.

I facilitate a group every week and I see this positive growth over the course of months that I never thought

Our groups have members who have experienced different types of loss. There are people in the group whose loss is the result of a heart attack, some people experience COVID, some people experience the death of a loved one through either homicide or suicide. They’re all in the same group. And what I find so remarkable, and I didn’t think this until I started facilitating, is how much they learn from each other.

Somebody who has experienced a COVID loss feels such guilt for their family members lost. What did I do? I could have done more. I could have sent them to the hospital faster and so on. And it’s similar to those who’ve experienced a loss due to suicide. What else could I have done? And that self-blame is shared during group. They talk to each other, and they cry together. Then they laugh together, and they cry together. It’s a beautiful moment.

We serve everybody, meaning we have adults who are attending groups who don’t have young children in their lives, and maybe experience a loss of a spouse.

Our groups are separated by age, so we have elementary broken up by younger elementary and older elementary, middle school, senior high, young adults. And then we have adult groups. This is a little bit confusing with our name and we’re working on making an update to our name in the future.

We serve everybody, meaning we have adults who are attending groups who don’t have young children in their lives, and maybe experience a loss of a spouse. We call that our Lift from Loss program. What we’re seeing in that group more than anything else is people coming more than once a week now that we are online. It’s remarkable. And what they said in the group I attended last night, it was like they were scripted, which they weren’t, but they just kept saying how much the CBC has helped them through these terrible times.

What sets you apart from other nonprofits in your community?

In South Florida there are not many organizations that have the full family support model for grief support. There are churches or synagogues that will hold a support group. It’s often only for adults and our model is that we want to make sure that needs are shared by the entire family. Especially at a time when there’s so much loss in the whole country and the world, we want to make sure that everybody in the family knows it’s okay to talk about it. So, our model is for the full family, and it sets us apart.

The other thing that sets us apart is that we train about grief and loss in the community through different platforms. A lot of organizations don’t, but it’s really criti-

cal to everyone’s mental health to discuss grief and loss. Oftentimes people skip over the loss and talk about the depression and other things that are happening, but they don’t come back to the loss. What I’ve seen is that people will hold onto that grief and not know that they should talk about it or could talk about it or want to talk about it because they’re scared of it.

Nobody should ever grieve alone. That is critical. And especially now during a time when there’s been so much loss, we want to make sure that nobody grieves alone.

Also, we’ve been contracting with organizations to provide grief-informed training for their staff. All these individuals are going back into the workplace after two years who have often experienced their colleagues’ loss or their own losses. We can go into the organization to speak about grief and loss as it might be the only time people have the chance to do so. While CBC does not offer therapy, our groups are therapeutic, and we will refer out to therapy if a participant would like to attend both. Going to grief support groups and therapy are not mutually exclusive and we tell people it’s important that they can decide to do one or to do both, whatever is comfortable for them.

Tell us a story that illustrates the good work you are doing.

I was facilitating a children’s group, the elementary school group, going back a few months. We had sev-

eral younger children in the group, and one was much younger. He must have been five years old, and his parent had died. He was having a hard moment in the group, and he had his head down. All of a sudden, one of the other group members who was a little older, saw it, another young boy who also lost his parent. And he said, “Hey man, we’re here for you. You’re gonna be okay.” This little one picks up his head and had the biggest smile on his face that the older kid had acknowledged him. He became engaged and talking, and that’s why we’re here because you have to know as a child, or an adult, that someone is there for you.

Oftentimes after the loss of a loved one, family and friends are very active that first month, checking in on them, maybe even the first six months. And then after that point, there’s a serious decline in people asking, “How are you doing? What can I do to help?” Our group allows people to come for many years, to be able to continue to come as long as they want to be surrounded by people who will always be there for support.

What is your greatest achievement or contribution to the community?

I think it’s the fact that we’re a nonprofit that’s been around since 1999 and our services are free. We don’t charge a penny to any of our participants. That in and of itself is a huge accomplishment that we’ve been able to make it for this long. And a lot of it has to do with supporters like your program, because we’re able to fundraise money to make sure that people don’t have to think about it. We want them to just be able to come and we never ask for funds.

I don’t know a lot of nonprofits that do that, that have been around for as long as we’ve been around, not asking for money and just offering a free service. So that’s a big accomplishment.

What do you want people to know about Children’s Bereavement Center?

I would say the most important thing is that we want people to know that we’re available to anybody. That is something we couldn’t say in 2019. It’s one of those silver linings of the pandemic that I’m really proud of; we now have the opportunity to help people anywhere.

I’ll bring up the Surfside building collapse tragedy. We had people from around the world that were impacted by that. It’s one of our only two specific groups. We have a perinatal and infant loss group for parents who lost a child in pregnancy or during the first year of life. And then we have a Surfside group for family members who lost somebody they loved in that tragedy. And I’ll tell you, it’s drawing people from everywhere.

To me, the most important thing that people need to know is that we’re here for you no matter where you are. We have groups in English and Spanish. We’re about to introduce Creole because the Haitian community is very large in South Florida.

How will you use the funds raised from the Winn-Dixie Community Bag Program?

The funds that we receive from the Winn-Dixie community bag program go to supporting our support groups. We want to make sure we can continue to offer those free groups. We follow the school schedule as far

as holidays, but our groups operate year-round because grief does not take a summer break.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Thank you to Winn-Dixie! We’re thrilled to be able to get the information out there about our services and that they are free.

It’s so important to be able to understand grief and loss because death is something we all deal with no matter who you are, where you are in the world. Unfortunately, we all know somebody who dies at some point in our life. And it’s very important for us because that person doesn’t go away, that person is always in your heart. Nobody should ever grieve alone. That is critical. And especially now during a time when there’s been so much loss, we want to make sure that nobody grieves alone.

CEO Debra Albo-Steiger, LSCW, emphasizes that Children’s Bereavement Center provides grief support not just for children but for adults also. CBC has expanded to offer grief support groups beyond schoolaged children through its adult division, Lift From Loss, so that young adults and adults are also able to seek help completely free.

Together we can make a difference.

COCONUT GROVE CRISIS FOOD PANTRY

At Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry, everyone is a volunteer. As Director of Outreach Deborah

Dolson says, “We all share this mission in our hearts,” and they’ve been doing it for more than

38 years. Winn-Dixie has supported this organization through its Community Bag and Bloomin’

4 Good Programs.

Tell us about the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry.

Our mission is to help people in Coconut Grove who face food insecurity. The pantry began in 1984 when people in the Coconut Grove area saw the need for as-

shelf-stable canned goods, pasta, protein, breakfast and bakery items and fresh produce.

Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry is dedicated to well-proportioned food bags. With prices rising, it has become a much bigger mission to find those items, which is why donation programs like the Winn-Dixie Community Bag and Bloomin’4 Good Programs are crucial to our cause.

sistance for the homeless and food insecure. A woman named Ethel Phelps got together with other community members and founded the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry. Fortunately, Christ Episcopal Church, which is in Little Bahamas, became the home for our pantry. The church offered us a space to operate. It’s been a long time, but the church has always supported and allowed us to flourish.

There are three other founding organizations besides Christ Episcopal Church: St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Plymouth Congregational Church and St. Philip’s Episcopal Church. Members of these congregations hold seats on our board and have guided the future of our pantry.

What services do you provide to the community?

The pantry packages and delivers groceries to 220 households in the Coconut Grove area weekly. In these food bags, we are committed to ensuring a balanced variety of nutritionally sound food. They always have

What sets you apart from other nonprofits in your community?

The number one thing that sets us apart is that our program delivers meals and groceries to our clients. Our delivery system started because of Covid. We had to figure out a way to get food to our clients since they could no longer come to us; so we started the delivery, which has continued.

Before Covid, we had about 50 or 60 people who came and picked up groceries. We then had to develop a model to get the food to our clients. Many other pantries began doing drive-through events. These events weren’t feasible for us because of our location and the fact that many of our clients do not have cars to get to a drive-up program. To continue with our much-needed food donations, we landed on the delivery model that ended up being so successful that we continued with it after Covid restrictions loosened.

Please tell us a story that illustrates your organization’s good work.

We have one client who has no permanent shelter. He has been in the Grove for many years and calls Peacock

The number one thing that sets us apart is that our program delivers meals and groceries to our clients.

Park his home. He came to the Grove from another state, not knowing anyone or having a place to land. He walked around for three days and stumbled upon the pantry when we were serving meals. He had his first meal in days and was so thankful to have found the pantry. We became a resource for not only meals but groceries as well. This happened around seven years ago; we were able to give this man hope and somewhere to turn, and he has been with us ever since. When he picks up his groceries, he takes them to the park and shares them with other people in need.

Another similar situation the pantry assists with is people who live on boats around the Grove. There are a lot of anchored boats offshore with people in the same situation. They can’t come to the pantry because they cannot leave their boats and don’t have the funds to go grocery shopping. One woman comes in and picks up around ten grocery bags to deliver to these individuals. She takes the food onto her boat and goes around on the water giving it to all the others. It’s not just us caring for our clients; our clients care for each other.

What is your most outstanding achievement or contribution to the community?

Reaching out and being able to help so many people in our community is essential to our team. Having so many volunteers assist over such a long time makes us proud.

In addition, we cannot emphasize enough the generosity of donors in and out of our community who give to the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry. So many donate their time, funds and food to help uplift this

community. It’s incredible how many individuals and groups come to us and offer support. The encouragement is amazing to have.

What do you want people to know about the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry?

Every donation, no matter the size, is so important and appreciated. We send out weekly grocery bags containing over 2,000 items; nothing donated stays in our inventory for very long. In addition to all the donated goods, we use any funds we receive to shop weekly to ensure each grocery bag is balanced with fresh produce, bakery items and proteins. Every dollar, canned good and boxed item is incredibly important and goes immediately to a household in need.

How will you use the funds raised from the Winn-Dixie Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs?

We use the funds to purchase any fresh items we may need for our bags and ensure they have a nice balance of food. Sometimes donations will also help sustain the small inventory we have, although most everything we receive goes in one door and immediately out the other. Anything earned from the Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs is a great help to these efforts.

Every week we sit down and look at what we already have because each bag must get the same content. Filling in those inventory gaps is the primary way we use any donations. One of our amazing volunteers takes the shopping list and will go to five or six stores to ensure she gets the most out of the funds we receive. Seeing

how much we can do with generous donations like the ones we get from the Community Bag and Bloomin’ 4 Good Programs is fantastic.

Is there anything you would like to add?

Everyone at the pantry is a volunteer, and we all share this mission in our hearts. The continuity of our volunteers is fantastic. One of our volunteers is 91. She was born and raised in Coconut Grove and comes every week. The dedication to our mission is amazing to see; it’s the heartbeat of our organization.

Our clients are so grateful. Now that we deliver, I see them less often, but our drivers bring back information and beautiful stories. For example, a driver might notice we provide to a family with kids, so we add milk to their bag. Our clients might be homeless and unable to cook their food, so they will receive unique bags with food that doesn’t need to be cooked. One client found out that their driver loves mangos, so during the mango season, they would have a cut-up mango ready for their volunteer when they showed up to deliver. The things that our clients do to show their appreciation are lovely.

Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry is not government-supported. We rely totally on the generous donations that we receive. Thank you to all that support our cause.

Having so many volunteers assist over such a long time makes us proud.

Deborah Dolson is the Director of Outreach for the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry.

Promoting a vital public resource.

FRIENDS OF

THE HIALEAH PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries is the only nonprofit organization supporting Hialeah’s public libraries, which first opened in 1925. Fresco y Más has supported the Friends through its Community Bag Program.

Tell us about Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries.

The Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries Inc. is a nonprofit community membership organization that supports and promotes the library as a vital public resource through an array of activities from fundraising and programming to public relations and community outreach.

We were founded in 2004 and were started by library patrons who visited and participated in library programs and wanted to give back to the library.

Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries

provides invaluable volunteer services for the library and the community.

What services are you providing to the community?

We support the library’s collection and programs by planning, implementing and assisting fundraising to enhance library and literacy efforts and services to our community. We also inform the public and governmental officials on issues affecting the library and advocate for excellence in library and literacy services.

Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries provides invaluable volunteer services for the library and the community, and they promote educational and cultural enrichment through the use of the library. They do this to ensure that the community knows how the library is there to serve them. And we recruit members from our community on a continual basis, seeking representa-

tion that reflects our community’s population.

Many of these services are to sponsor the library programs for children, youth, and adults, and to encourage the unrestricted donation of gifts, endowments and bequests to the library from our community. We don’t have any other nonprofits that support our library.

Tell us a story that illustrates the good work you are doing.

The Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries participate in our city’s annual events. They’ve raised money for the library by having raffles, used book sales, and garage sales, for examples. The funds raised assist the library in the purchase of program supplies and new books for the collection.

The Friends also assist Café Literario, which is a Spanish writer’s workshop/book club; the majority of people in our community speak Spanish. They helped in publishing the books of two writers from the café. The café also includes poets and short story writers.

The library has a summer reading challenge where a child reads five to 15 minutes a day and enters it into a log every time. At the end of the summer, the top readers of each section grouped by age, from PreK-K to Adults, receive a prize funded through the Friends. This program is to keep the mind active during the summer.

What do you want people to know about your organization?

The most important thing is that this nonprofit organization exists, and we are accepting donations.

During the pandemic not only did the library’s funds get hit, but the Friends did as well because nobody was coming to the library since it was closed. So those book sales that we used to have that the Friends organized no longer took place. The raffles no longer took place. Getting the fundraising efforts back up has been a challenge for Friends of the Hialeah Public Libraries. That’s one of the things that we really want people to know. We are here, and we are accepting donations at this time.

y Más Community Bag Program?

We can use the funds two different ways. They will enable us to add new books to our collection and also to support our programs. For example, we purchase supplies needed for our programs, which can also include refreshments. Recently we had an event with an award-winning author and the Friends supported that event by purchasing the refreshments.

We also have a small public garden for the community and in the past, we’ve purchased plants and soil. In addition, the Friends volunteer to work in the garden, making sure that things stay nice, healthy and clean.

How will you use the funds raised through the Fresco

Hialeah Public Libraries representatives Theresa Cuba, Libraries Services Supervisor, and Lazara Olivera were interviewed for this impact story.

2022 Impact Stories

SEG COMMUNITY BAG & BLOOMIN’ 4 GOOD PROGRAMS

For more information about the Programs and to view more Impact Stories, please visit seg.2givelocal.com

Jim Brennan Co-Founder & COO 207.351.6903 jimb@psitmatters.com

Emma Richardson Senior Program Manager 603.380.9400, ext. 112 emmar@psitmatters.com