The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset announced four $100,000 grants to two Long Island organizations that fight homelessness and hunger, and two national groups that advocate for women’s issues at a May 26 press conference at the congregation at 48 Shelter Rock Rd.
The local grants were given to United Veterans Beacon House, a Bay Shore nonprofit that runs 34 homeless shelters for veterans and others; the Hempstead-based Interfaith Nutrition Network (INN), which operates soup kitchens and homeless shelters, plus the National Women’s Law Center of Washington, D.C., and the Trust Women Foundation in Wichita, Kansas.
“We’re here because homelessness continues to be a problem plaguing Long Island,” Shelter Rock senior minister Paul Johnson said, “and because this congregation has been blessed with financial resources that enable it to respond to this problem.”
Beacon House plans to use its grant to finish renovating a house on Henry Street in Hempstead for six to eight veterans. The INN will use its grant to renovate its Hempstead men’s shelter.
Shelter Rock congregants have been cooking for INN clients for three decades and have donated cash, food and clothing to Beacon House residents in Freeport, while also helping them plant and harvest a vegetable garden there. Shelter Rock president Arnold Babel presented oversize checks to Beacon House president/CEO Frank Amalfitano and INN executive director Jean Kelly. The congregation has made three $100,000 grants to Beacon House in the past seven years and has made four grants totaling $525,000 to the INN through its large grants program since 2007.
“We truly are grateful for you making another dream come true for the INN,” Kelly said, adding that she will have a plaque installed at the Donald Axinn shelter to commemorate Shelter Rock’s gift. “We thank you from the bottom of our collective and ever grateful hearts.”
Amalfitano thanked UUCSR for its “steady and generous support. This has been a great relationship.” He said the Hempstead Beacon House site will become a home for the veterans there as other Beacon House properties in other communities have.
Beacon House housing director Doug Ruiz, who served in the Marines from 1981-84, was a Beacon House client in 2000 and overcame heroin addiction, said of the nonprofit, which has a 78 percent success rate, “I get choked up. It means a lot to me. It put me on track to employability, helped me restore relations with my family, put structure in my life, helped me become the person I am today.”
Ruiz, 54, was raised in the Bronx and now is married and lives in Brentwood. He said he bottomed out in 2000 when his sister drove him the Northport VA Medical Center residence (run by Beacon House since this past Jan. 1) for a 28-day drug treatment program. “I see these guys today,” he said, “fast-talking, at times belligerent, not taking directives at first, and I see them straightening up, doing what we ask them to do and going on to succeed. They overcome feelings of inadequacy and fear — fear of the unknown, of living a clean life.”
Beacon House connects its residents to benefits, medication, job training, counseling and schooling. The INN is attempting to do the same things through its Center for Transformative Change.
Through the Shelter Rock large grants program, 63 grants totaling $6.4 million have been given to nonprofits plus another $2.9 million of crisis grants to 20 groups involved in relief efforts and other work on Long Island and around the world. The congregation also has a Veatch Program with a national profile. During the 10-year tenure of its executive director Ned Wight, the Veatch Program has delivered more than $112 million to progressive organizations that work for systemic changes. Asked about the grants to Beacon House and the INN, Rev. Johnson said, “all this is in accordance with our first principle of UUism, a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all persons…and justice, equity and compassion in human relationships.”