Valley Community Foundation Awards Nearly $20,000 in Community Grants

VCF announces more than $18,000 in community grants have been awarded to eight Valley organizations.

DERBY (June 5, 2017) - The Valley Community Foundation (VCF) has awarded more than $18,000 in Community Grants to eight community groups serving the Valley. This application process recognizes smaller, volunteer or neighborhood groups with grant awards of up to $2,500. This year's grants will support programs and services ranging from digitizing the Valley Sentinel to providing support for a program to prevent sexual assault and violence among youth.

"VCF is proud to support the work that is being done through these eight organizations," said VCF President and CEO Sharon Closius. "These grants, though small in nature, have a large impact on the Greater Valley Community. Each of these groups is working tirelessly to help make the Valley a better place to live, work, and play. We wish them all much success in the months ahead."

The following is a list of VCF Community Grantees for 2017:

Adam Wysota Foundation - $2,500 To support a memorial garden with beautiful plantings and a walkway where children will create a commemorative bricks in honor of loved ones.

Annual Thanksgiving Basket Committee - $2,000 To support the purchase of perishable and non-perishable food items for distribution of Thanksgiving baskets to fifty families in need.

Ansonia Historical Commission - $2,500 To support digitizing the Valley Sentinel newspaper from microfiche to a searchable, indexed web format that can be viewed, studied, preserved and appreciated securely online.

City of Derby, Bureau of Youth Services - $2,306 To support a program to prevent sexual assault and violence among youth.

Derby High School PTO - $1,250 To support the purchase of a printer for the school library.

Derby Historical Society - $2,500 To provide transportation assistance to Valley schools to visit the General David Humphreys House in Derby.

Southford Falls Quilters LLC - $2,500 To support enhancing fiber arts and design knowledge in quilting through classes, workshops, speakers and instructors.

Youth 2 Youth Peer Advocates - $2,500.00 To support the cost of sending high school to the Youth 2 Youth National conference in RI. The Conference focuses on four areas with a comprehensive approach: drug education and information, personal growth, decision making environmental change and drug free fun.

About the Valley Community Foundation

Established in 2004, the Valley Community Foundation distributes hundreds of thousands of grant dollars each year to support the local nonprofit sector and the people it serves. In addition to grantmaking, VCF works in strong partnership with The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven (TCF), to promote philanthropy in Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour and Shelton and receives funding from The Gates Fund and other preference funds at TCF. To learn how your gifts of cash, life insurance, appreciated stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets can help to support the quality of life in the Valley, please visit the website at www.valleyfoundation.org or contact VCF President, Sharon Closius, at sclosius@valleyfoundation.org or 203-751-9162.