OUR IMPACT ON HUMAN SERVICES
The COVID-19 Unity Response Fund
The COVID-19 Unity Response Fund was created by the Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes, the Corning Incorporated Foundation, The Triangle Fund and the United Way of the Southern Tier. In just seven business days after the NY State PAUSE announcement, the four funders, through their combined leadership and experience, collaborated to open the Unity Response fund with a $325,000 commitment to non-profit organizations on the front-line of the Covid-19 crisis in the Southern Tier. The Unity Fund focused on human service organizations that were supplying basic needs, supporting vulnerable populations, and easing burdens on essential workers with grants ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 to nonprofit organizations that had projects that were operational immediately.
During the month of April, an additional $100,000 was raised for the Unity Fund. Corning Incorporated senior leadership and numerous board members were among the contributors. In total, the Unity Fund, raised just over a remarkable $520,000 for the community.
Food Bank of the Southern Tier
Nutritious food gets on the tables of thousands of families who need it most – even if they live in a remote rural area of Western New York — through the Food Bank of the Southern Tier’s Mobile Food Pantry. The program brings free, healthy food to dozens of volunteer-run locations in the agency’s six-county service area. Corning Incorporated Foundation helps sustain this effort with funding to purchase delivery trucks for the Mobile Food Panty. A 2017 Foundation grant helped the Food Bank raise enough capital to buy five new refrigerated trucks, bringing the total fleet to nine. Each truck transports up to 15,000 pounds of food to people in need each day.
Habitat for Humanity of York County
Habitat for Humanity of York County has a long history of mobilizing volunteers to build dozens of affordable, energy-efficient homes for low-income families in southern Maine. Corning Incorporated Foundation supports this Habitat chapter with grants that help defer the cost of property purchase, demolition of old structures, and materials for a new home. A recent grant made possible the construction of the chapter’s 28th new home. Volunteers and the Habitat partner family worked side-by-side to create safe, decent housing and a new chance for a stable future.
Warm Hearth Village
Rising healthcare costs have brought budgetary challenges to Warm Hearth Village in Blacksburg, Va., which offers senior citizens a continuum of living options regardless of financial circumstances. A Corning Incorporated Foundation grant has helped defray some costs of housing, meals, and care for low-income and disabled residents. This allows them to stay and thrive in an atmosphere devoted to dignity where they have access to progressive healthcare options as their needs dictate.
“I’ve really appreciated the services that my family and I have received. Volunteering allows me a way to pay it back to the organization that helped us.”
Christine Heckle, Research Director, Inorganic Materials Research, Corning Incorporated