Last year, Post-News Season to Share distributed a record $2.19 million to 62 agencies that help children, the hungry, the homeless and those in need of medical care.
CHILDREN
The Adoption Exchange ($10,000) Last year, 321 children waiting for permanent families were served. Most were 8 or older, and 81 of the children were adopted.
Anchor Center for Blind Children ($50,000) Anchor Center is the only privately funded organization in the state with a goal of providing the tools necessary for young children with blindness or visual impairments to develop to their fullest potential.
Colorado Bright Beginnings ($35,000) This home-visitation program provides parents of infants and toddlers with quality information around parenting, child and brain development, health issues and community resources.
Denver Kids ($30,000) The mentoring agency connects Denver Public Schools children with counseling and a trained adult who acts as a stabilizing influence. Denver Kids maintains an 85 percent graduation rate among participants.
Denver Public Schools Pupil Assistance Fund ($20,000) The fund provides winter coats, clothing vouchers, eye exams and glasses, and hygiene items for the 62 percent of Denver Public Schools students who qualify for the free and reduced-price lunch program.
Family Star Montessori ($32,500) This early-childhood and parent-education center helps children enter school ready to learn, regardless of family income.
Girls Incorporated of Metro Denver ($20,000) Girls Inc. offers innovative educational programs that prepare girls ages 6 to 11 to succeed in school and create confident and successful futures — helping girls to be strong, smart and bold.
HOPE Center ($35,000) The center offers quality child care and preschool for typical, special needs and gifted children.
Jewish Community Center ($10,000) The JCC’s Early Childhood Center is a child-centered, play-based, developmental program that helps develop the whole child: socially, intellectually, emotionally and physically.
Metro Denver Partners ($20,000) At-risk youths receive help from Metro Denver Partners with supportive role models/mentors and program services that empower them to make positive life choices.
Mount Saint Vincent Home ($40,000) Mount Saint Vincent Home provides residential treatment for abused and neglected children. Its on-site school offers academic and emotional support.
National Sports Center for the Disabled ($25,000) The Sponsor an Athlete Scholarship Program ensures that low-income youths with disabilities can participate in the agency’s adaptive-sports and therapeutic-recreation programs.
Parenting Place ($30,0000) Boulder’s Parenting Place strives to relieve isolation, reduce stress of parenting and prevent child abuse and neglect by providing outreach and a place where families can receive support, education and develop a sense of community.
Ronald McDonald House Charities ($20,000) Ronald McDonald House provides low-cost temporary lodging and support services to families with a seriously ill or injured child who is receiving treatment at a Denver-area hospital.
Sewall Child Development Center ($25,000) The center is dedicated to meeting the needs of and enhancing opportunities for young children with special needs associated with disabilities, developmental delays and economic disadvantages.
Tennyson Center for Children ($45,000) Tennyson Center is the largest residential and day treatment facility in the Rocky Mountain region for abused and neglected children ages 5 through 14.
The Tiny Tim Center ($30,000) This Longmont preschool served 400 children in 2006, half of whom have special needs. The center’s outreach program provides physical, speech and occupational therapy for children from birth through age 12, one-third of whom are Medicaid-eligible.
YMCA of Metropolitan Denver ($15,000) The School Age Child Care program offers affordable before- and after-school care at six YMCA branches and 15 public elementary schools.
YWCA of Boulder County ($45,000) The YMCA Children’s Alley program provides the only drop-in, emergency or temporary sliding-scale child care in Boulder County, as well as respite care for parents of children with disabilities.
HOMELESS
ACS Community L.I.F.T. ($35,000) This agency’s FamilyCare Program provides families in crisis with emergency food, temporary housing and other support services to allow them to remain or become self-sufficient. Its food bank is the third-largest in the state.
Aurora Interchurch Task Force ($30,000) AITF provided emergency food, clothing, transportation and utility assistance to nearly 15,000 Aurora residents in need last year, effectively preventing homelessness for many of the community’s working poor.
Boulder Shelter for the Homeless ($40,000) Boulder Shelter for the Homeless provides safe shelter, food, support services and an avenue to self-sufficiency for homeless individuals. It offers warm meals and beds to 1,000 clients each year.
Broadway Assistance Center ($25,000) Each month, Broadway Assistance Center provides 8,000 units of emergency services — including food, clothing, medical care, and rent and utility assistance — to vulnerable residents of Denver’s Baker neighborhood.
Carriage House Community Center ($20,000) This daytime shelter offers Boulder’s homeless population hot meals, showers, case management and employment services.
Catholic Charities’ Samaritan House ($50,000) Catholic Charities’ Samaritan House provides nearly 50 percent of the emergency housing for Denver’s homeless families and individuals.
Community Ministry of Southwest Denver ($25,000) More than 20,000 people will receive food, clothing and emergency financial assistance this year from Community Ministry.
The Delores Project ($30,000) This agency served 292 homeless women last year with shelter, meals and support services.
Denver Urban Ministries ($50,000) DenUM’s programs include a food bank, rent and utility assistance, legal counseling, and job and community services for more than 54,000 of Denver’s low-income residents.
Douglas/Elbert Task Force ($25,000) Douglas/Elbert Task Force served 12,457 people last year with basic necessities, including food, clothing, and rent, transportation and utility assistance.
Family HomeStead ($40,000) This agency’s emergency and transitional housing programs allow families who are experiencing homelessness to stabilize and return to self-sufficiency.
Family Tree ($35,000) Family Tree’s Women in Crisis Program is Jefferson County’s only shelter for battered women and their children.
The Gathering Place ($50,000) The Gathering Place is a day shelter for women and their children who are experiencing homelessness. It provides a safe environment and intervention services for at least 250 people daily.
Inter-Church ARMS ($17,000) Inter- Church Arvada Resource for Ministry and Service’s Emergency Service Program provides rent/mortgage, utility, medical/dental and food aid to residents of northeast Jefferson County and northwest Adams County.
Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Denver ($25,000) The network’s collaboration of 49 churches offers shelter, meals and support services for families experiencing homelessness.
Jeffco Action Center ($50,000) Programs provided by the center include homeless shelters, food and clothing banks, utility and rent assistance, a health clinic, tenant/landlord counseling and the Santa Shop, where low-income parents can obtain low-cost or free holiday gifts for their children.
Metro CareRing ($50,000) More than 30,000 people in 10,000 households receive emergency food, utility assistance, personal-care items and referrals to community services through Metro CareRing. Volunteers contribute 18,000 hours annually, the equivalent of nine full-time employees.
OUR Center ($35,000) The Outreach United Resource Center offers emergency food, rent and utility assistance, transportation and shelter to families facing homelessness in Longmont. The agency’s Child Care Center offers affordable care to infants and toddlers.
Parent Pathways ($30,000) Parent Pathways’ Housing Services Program provides teen parents and their families with direct housing assistance, support services, life skills counseling and parenting education.
Parker Task Force ($13,000) This all-volunteer emergency services agency provided food and financial assistance to 332 families in crisis in Parker, Elizabeth and Franktown last year.
Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence ($30,000) Boulder’s domestic violence shelter and education agency, SPAN responded to more than 11,000 crisis calls, sheltered 271 women and children, and counseled 1,500 people last year.
St. Francis Center ($50,000) This homeless shelter offers safety, warmth, meals, showers, laundry, clothing, phones and other basic needs during the daytime hours when overnight shelters are closed.
The Salvation Army Lambuth Family Center ($20,000) The center provides families experiencing homelessness with housing, food and support services.
Sister Carmen Community Center ($25,000) This emergency services agency in Lafayette provides a food bank, rent/mortgage assistance, school-supply collection and distribution, and clothing and household goods to more than 3,000 vulnerable people.
Special Transit ($25,000) Special Transit ensures access to safe shelter and health care for individuals who are homeless, low-income seniors and those with disabilities.
Stride ($25,000) Stride offers self-sufficiency training for families transitioning off of public assistance, transitional housing for homeless families, and a program providing financial assistance for low-income children to participate in extracurricular activities.
Urban Peak ($50,000) Urban Peak Denver provided shelter, case management, education, employment and health services to more than 800 homeless and runaway youths last year.
Volunteers of America ($30,000) Theodora House is a 27-bed overnight shelter for homeless, single women with chronic mental illness and no children in their custody.
HUNGER
Arvada Community Food Bank ($20,000) More than 31,500 people were served by this food bank last year. Services include an innovative backpack program that sends food home with low-income children for the weekend, when school-lunch programs are not available.
Capitol Hill Community Services ($45,000) With the help of more than 200 volunteers (including students from three of Denver’s private schools), this agency serves 53,000 meals each year with one full- and two part-time employees.
Colorado AIDS Project ($50,000) Since its creation in 1987, Colorado AIDS Project’s food bank has provided free groceries that meet the specific nutritional needs of people living with HIV/AIDS who have incomes at or below 125 percent of poverty level.
Denver Inner City Parish ($10,000) Denver Inner City Parish’s food bank and emergency services offer support to low-income residents of the La Alma and Lincoln Park neighborhoods.
Food Bank of the Rockies ($50,000) Food Bank of the Rockies is the largest distributor of food for those in need in the Rocky Mountain region. Last year, it distributed 16 million pounds of food to 600 hunger-relief programs in the metro Denver area.
Project Angel Heart ($50,000) Project Angel Heart provides home- delivered, nutritious meals to individuals living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, as well as their dependents.
Share Our Strength-Operation Frontline Colorado ($30,000) Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline Colorado program offers nutrition education, cooking classes and budgeting tips to 500 families annually in an effort to promote positive eating and cooking habits.
MEDICAL
The Children’s Hospital Foundation ($50,000) The Child Health Clinic is a full-service general pediatric clinic that provides primary health care to 8,000 uninsured and under-insured children each year.
Clinica Campesina ($50,000) Clinica Campesina has one dental and three medical clinics that provide bilingual primary health care to almost 24,000 uninsured children and adults in eastern Boulder, Broomfield and western Adams counties.
Clinica Tepeyac ($40,000) Clinica Tepeyac’s purpose is to be a gateway to health for the uninsured, primarily Latino residents of metro Denver. Nearly 10,000 people received culturally appropriate primary health care from this agency last year.
Colorado Coalition for the Homeless ($40,000) The coalition’s Health Outreach Program van is a mobile RV outfitted to provide primary health care to Denver’s homeless community, serving more than 1,600 individuals last year.
Dental Aid ($50,000) Dental Aid offers full-service, sliding-fee scale dental clinics in Boulder, Longmont, Louisville and Lafayette. Last year, it served 6,525 patients in more than 16,000 visits.
Howard Dental Center ($30,000) Howard Dental Center is dedicated to providing compassionate, high-quality professional dental care in a private setting for men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS.
Inner City Health Center ($50,000) Located in Five Points, Inner City Health Center recorded 20,441 medical, dental and mental-health visits last year, serving medically uninsured and under-insured individuals as well as very low-income families in metro Denver and beyond.
National Jewish Health ($50,000) The Kunsberg School for Chronically Ill Children on the National Jewish campus addresses the needs of children in kindergarten through eighth grade whose education is interrupted by chronic illness, such as asthma, sickle-cell anemia and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
National Multiple Sclerosis Society ($30,000) National MS’s Independent Living Empowerment and Advocacy Program assists low-income MS patients by coordinating medical and community services to achieve a consistent continuum of health care and support.
Rocky Mountain Multiple Sclerosis Center ($35,000) This agency’s King Adult Day Enrichment Program serves 60 people with MS and other neurological disorders each day with exercise, recreation and social activities, charging fees on a sliding scale.
Rocky Mountain Youth Clinics ($50,000) Rocky Mountain Youth health clinics are operated in partnership with community organizations serving youths. The clinics provide accessible, quality health care regardless of a child’s insurance status or ability to pay.
