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Local charities are hurting for your donations
By tamara el-khoury
Published November 21, 2006
Donations from the Postal Service's annual food drive used to fill the pantry for months at the Safety Harbor Neighborhood Family Center. "Not anymore," said Karen Fitzpatrick, the organization's executive director. Now the family center struggles to keep the shelves full at the food pantry, which is open twice a week and serves 60 to 70 families a week. To make matters worse, the pantry is out of the allocated quarterly money used to help keep the power on and stop evictions for their clients. Because of rising property taxes, gas prices and homeowner's insurance rates, local charitable organizations are seeing more families seeking its services and fewer donations to defray the burden. "Everything keeps inching up, inching up, and wages aren't inching up with it," Fitzpatrick said. "It comes to a point when a family is living paycheck to paycheck because the costs are rising." The 16 emergency and transitional shelters at the YWCA Tampa Bay are always full, said chief executive officer Susan Finlaw-Dusseault. "We consistently turn away many more families than we are able to serve," she said. She's finding that more working families are unable to pay their rents, which landlords are increasing to absorb their bigger insurance and property tax bills. Donations are down significantly at Clearwater's Kimberly Home pregnancy resource center, executive director Kate Kelly said. "I can only imagine it has something to do with people don't have enough extra to donate," Kelly said. Kimberly Home, which sees about 1,000 new clients each year, is especially in need of larger-sized diapers, baby clothing and blankets, cribs, and strollers, Kelly said. She said she hopes donations pick up between Thanksgiving and Christmas. "I've just been praying that it will get better," she said. The Safety Harbor center, Kimberly Home and YWCA all offer programs from which individuals or groups can adopt a family during the holidays. Those who adopt will get a family's wish list. The program takes care of about 350 to 400 children through the Safety Harbor family center, which is campaigning to find families to adopt one in need. Every year, families in need outnumber sponsors, said Dianna Kessel, family support specialist for the Safety Harbor center. The situation doesn't affect only those in need. Because people all over the area are feeling a financial squeeze, Kessel expects fewer monetary donations this year. The same is true for the YWCA, which has a Hispanic Outreach Center and a child care and learning center in Clearwater. Finlaw-Dusseault said she expects to see fewer $25 and $50 checks this holiday and has already seen a decline in cash donations. The good news is that there were enough Thanksgiving baskets for those who showed up at the family center Saturday. "Someone just donated 100 turkeys, so we're going to make Thanksgiving just fine," she said. Tamara El-Khoury can be reached at (727) 445-4181 or tel-khoury@sptimes.com. To help Safety Harbor Neighborhood Family Center The organization helps families in four ZIP codes: Safety Harbor, 34695; Countryside-Clearwater, 33761; Clearwater, 33759; and Oldsmar, 34677. 727 791-8255 1003 M.L. King (Fourth) St. N, Safety Harbor, FL 34695 www.shnfc.org YWCA of Tampa Bay 655 Second Ave. S, St. Petersburg, FL 33701 (727) 896-4629 www.ywca.org/tampabay Kimberly Home 1189 NE Cleveland St., Clearwater, FL 33755 (727) 443-0471 www.kimberlyhome.org
[Last modified November 21, 2006, 06:49:00]
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