Oneonta Church | South Pasadena Prayer Breakfast Selects Four Grant Recipients

South Pasadena Prayer Breakfast will award $1,500 grants to four nonprofit organizations at its annual event in May.

News provided by S.P.P.B.

South Pasadena Prayer Breakfast will award $1,500 grants to four nonprofit organizations at its annual event in May.

The grants to Young & Healthy Pasadena, Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena, Professional Child Development Associates and the Fire Family Foundation will serve our community’s children and families, many of whom have been affected by poverty and loss, mental health challenges, emotional diversity and other special needs, the committee said.

- Advertisement -

The awards coincide with the theme of this year’s prayer breakfast, “A Better Normal: Nurturing Compassion in Our Community,” and are made possible through donations by the event’s sponsors, which include Michelle Downing, Oneonta Congregational Church, Holy Family Catholic Church, Norris Realty Advisors, Kiwanis Club of South Pasadena, ReNew United Methodist Church, Moms in Prayer of South Pasadena, SmileHaus Orthodontics, Bob Joe and the Primuth Family.

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, and one focus this year is to recognize the crisis of a mental health epidemic, particularly in schools, amid a shortage of affordable therapeutic resources, the committee said. South Pasadena Unified School District has rapidly ramped up its mental health education and supports in our schools with its Train Your Brain program and counseling support staff, but private therapy can be expensive and hard to obtain. The committee’s grants are meant in part to highlight some of the good work being done in our area to provide accessible mental health support for children and families.

“The grant winners received the news with a lot of joy and gratitude” and will be present at the breakfast to receive their checks, said Nancy Norris, chair of the prayer breakfast committee. Grant allocations rose 50% to $1500 this year, helped by the faithfulness and generosity of the group’s donors.

The 2022 grant will help extend mental health and wellness services at the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena. Two programs they offer to their 450 club members are Meta-Moment, which fosters mental health self-regulation and development of coping skills, and Empowered Voices for teens, which builds resilience in a collaborative setting.

Professional Child Development Associates provides therapy, professional training and outreach to families of children with autism and other special needs. More than half of the 600 families they serve fall below the poverty line, and the prayer breakfast grant will help bridge inequities faced and offer opportunities for PCDA to have a greater impact.

As the pandemic continues and fire season is around the corner, the committee also wants to keep up support of our first responders. The Fire Family Foundation provides financial assistance, college scholarships and disaster relief to firefighters and their families in times of need. The prayer breakfast grant will be used toward providing scholarships to children of firefighters experiencing hardship.

Young & Healthy provides quality health care for underserved children in the greater Pasadena area, and its executive director, Mary Donnelly-Crocker, will be the keynote speaker at the breakfast.

“We get really trusted organizations that have specific needs,” Norris said. In previous years the grants have helped community-based charities such as Good Samaritots, Shower of Hope, Homeboy Industries and Door of Hope. “Our grant to them can make a small but impactful difference,” she said.

The prayer breakfast is free and will take place at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, May 5, 2022, in the center courtyard of Oneonta Congregational Church, 1515 Garfield Avenue, South Pasadena. Online reservations may be made.

South Pasadena Prayer Breakfast is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by local citizens and funded entirely by private donations. Since 2016, the group has raised more than $20,000 for local charities and programs that actively support prayer and service to our community. Visit the website or email southpasadenaprayer@gmail.com to learn more.