WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — On Wednesday, WNEP and the Tegna Foundation presented a $2,000 grant to a non-profit in Wilkes-Barre.
Photojournalist Corey Burns has more on the Family Service Association of Northeastern Pennsylvania and how these funds will help with the group's mission.
"We serve families, children, adults, seniors in the community. We have a number of different programs that we operate," said Sean Grow, CEO of Family Service Association NEPA. "So we do a guardianship program for seniors intervention Pro Services for men on domestic violence we also do one for women called Turning Points, you know, our two on one is is not only information and referral and connecting people to resources in our community, and 2020 104,000 calls, you know, so we're seeing a significant increase in calls and people reaching out. I think one of the things that we've learned with COVID is that there are already people struggling with food insecurities with homelessness, but with some of the other things and I think the pandemic just put an extra spotlight on all of that, that maybe this has allowed us to realize that there's people out there no matter what, whether there's a pandemic or not, folks need help. $2,000 goes a long way. You know, I can say as a nonprofit, we stretch every dollar you know so that it goes back to the direct service. So it's going to go up to our helpline it's going to it's going to support our staff, it's going to support training opportunities for staff again, you know, our staff are constantly trained in different levels of crisis work, critical incident stress, suicide prevention programs, things of that nature. And that all comes at a cost so it's allowing them to be on top of all that, knowing that we are part of the community and we're here to help."
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