A New Duo Puts Out The Call

Community leaders Friday launched a campaign to send a quick $1 million to families to keep them fed and housed during what could be the cruelest winter since the Great Depression.

The United Way and the Jewish Federation have joined forces to launch the ​“Neighbor-to-Neighbor” drive. Their respective executive directors, Jack Healy and Sydney Perry (pictured), announced the drive at a breakfast in a sun-drenched community room at the Tower One/ Tower East senior housing complex.

The goal of is to start distributing money within three weeks and to enlist churches, schools, and other community groups in raising it.

Starting Monday, agencies throughout Greater New Haven will be able to apply for emergency grants of up to $50,000 to house people, feed them, or address emergencies like broken transmissions on cars needed to drive to work. United Way and the Jewish Federation will review new applications every Friday and get the money into agencies’ hands the following Friday.

Applications for grants will be available on this website. So will information on donating money or volunteering. Information will also be available through these two email addresses.

Not-for-profit social-service agencies, town governments, and religious groups are eligible to apply for the grants.

United Way and the Jewish Federation felt they couldn’t wait on Washington, or on traditional year- or months-long fund-raising drives, to get cash in the hands of agencies on the front lines of the recession’s hydra-headed foreclosure, layoff, and food crises. Foreclosures about doubled in 2008, after rising 80 percent the year before. Pantries are reporting that they’re running out of food. Requests for help ranging from heating oil to emergency shelter to relief from domestic violence or substance abuse have soared in recent months.

“Our neighbors need us. They’re counting on us,” Sydney Perry said.

She noted that the demand for emergency help is coming from well beyond the ranks of the perennially poor. She spoke, for instance, of the wave of Russian refugees whom the Jewish Federation helped resettle here in the 1990s. After years of buying groceries at Stop & Shop, they’re showing up at the Jewish Family Services pantry — and encountering emptying shelves.

“Now we’re seeing middle-class. We’re seeing pensioners. People who have never needed help. They need it desperately,” Perry said.

She referenced the biblical story of Joseph, who oversaw a plan to survive a looming famine. ​“Where are our Josephs now?” she said. ​“We have to prepare for what we already know is a time of unprecedented need.”

The emergency campaign was put together in a matter of weeks. It was built on several ideas, said United Way’s Kate McEvoy (pictured): The two agencies both have good track record of raising and handling donations. It made more sense to work together than to conduct separate emergency campaigns. Staffs from both agencies, working together, can review and process the grants, so donated money can go directly to people who need it. And they can work fast.

The idea for the campaign was hatched in mid-December. Jewish Federation board Chair Andy Eder (pictured at Friday’s event) went to a Sunday meeting about his group’s plans to launch an emergency basic needs fund-raising drive. The next day, meeting with Jack Healy on an unrelated topic, he learned that United Way was hatching the same idea. He brought Healy and Perry together.

The joint campaign begins with $250,000 in hand toward the $1 million goal. The money comes from donations by Eder, William Graustein, Boris Mizhen, and the Jewish Federation, which gave $100,000.

This is the first time the two groups have joined forces like this. It won’t be the last, Healy said. He spoke of how Greater New Haven will need to work together as hard times settle in.

“The economy is going to reset. Life as we know it is going to be different,” Healy said. ​“This is something that is going to last a long time. And something that’s going to challenge our community. We need to figure out how to capture that spirit we all felt after 9 – 11.”

Among the breakfast participants was Pastor Todd Foster (pictured with Healy), whose Church on the Rock has already been on the front lines of antipoverty work in New Haven. Foster said the church recently formed a new group called the New Haven Help Alliance to raise money to build a new 9,000 square-foot youth center on Hamilton Street and to work with poor communities both in New Haven and abroad, in conjunction with Jeffrey Sachs’ Millennium Promise Alliance.