Grants Awarded

Grants approved by the Foundation Board June 10, 2019

Submitting Agency: Terebinth Refuge
Project Name: Terebinth Refuge Wellness Program
Amount awarded: $20,000
Project Summary: Terebinth Refuge opened in April of 2018 to provide safe, short-term shelter, longer-term transitional housing, and strength-based, trauma-informed healing and holistic services to adult women who have been sexually exploited and or trafficked (and their small children birth to 5 years). Women who have experienced sexual exploitation also have been victims of extreme physical and sexual abuse and violence, are exposed to sexually transmitted disease, have addictions, and have extreme trauma resulting in PTSD and other diagnosis that make surviving without medical and mental health intervention next to impossible. This innovative and holistic healing program model is designed to address the whole person — body, mind, soul and spirit — while building consistent and trusting relationships with clients, which is vital to their progress and healing.

Submitting Agency: Minnesota Milk Bank for Babies
Project Name: Minnesota Milk Bank for Babies — Central Minnesota Donor Milk Services Network
Amount awarded: $30,000
Project Summary: Minnesota Milk Bank for Babies is assisting in establishing a donor milk services network in Central Minnesota. There is a critical, urgent need for a human donor milk bank. Currently all donor milk that is used in Minnesota hospitals is purchased from out-of-state milk banks. This can and does lead to shortages. Approximately 25 percent of Minnesota hospitals that deliver babies are currently using donor milk. That number is increasing as more studies demonstrate the benefits of donor milk, especially with preterm and babies most in need. The Minnesota Milk Bank consists of a state-wide network of community-based depots where mothers drop-off their extra breast milk to babies in need, and then the donated milk is pasteurized and distributed to hospitals for preterm and critically ill babies. Mothers who donate are screened through interviews, written applications and several blood tests. Human donor milk is considered a food product by the FDA so must meet all food and safety regulations and be licensed by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and accredited by HMBANA, the Human Milk Banking Association of North America.

Grants approved by the Foundation Board Feb. 20, 2019

Submitting Agency: Cancer Legal Care
Project Name: Legal Care
Amount awarded: $13,805
Project Summary: Support will help underwrite expenses associated with provision of free legal care to CentraCare patients by Cancer Legal Care staff and volunteer attorneys. Legal care is provided in a warm, caring, non-bureaucratic, non-rushed manner during which the client’s current needs are discussed and emergent needs identified. A hallmark the Legal Care Program (LCP) is they go where their clients need them to go — to their homes or hospital rooms or meeting with them in the office or over the phone. In addition to legal services, they also will provide educational presentations to CentraCare staff, patients and patients’ families. They have made over 125 presentations on legal issues related to cancer to nearly 5,000 cancer patients, caregivers, and health care and legal professionals.

Submitting Agency: Star Legacy Foundation
Project Name: Minnesota Center for SIDS and Perinatal Death
Amount awarded: $25,000
Project Summary: Star Legacy Foundation aims to create a centralized resource for families who experience the death of a baby. Each year, more than 500 Minnesota families experience stillbirth, neonatal death and SIDS, and thousands more experience miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and similar losses. Families of color and Native American families have rates of stillbirth and neonatal death double that of Caucasian families. More than half of the mothers will develop depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or anxiety as a result. The Minnesota Center for SIDS and Perinatal Death will provide support groups, home health visits, evaluation of the entire family’s grief, medical referrals, peer support and assistance obtaining access to community resources.

Submitting Agency: Central MN Sexual Assault Center
Project Name: Community SANE (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) Program Enhancement and Expansion
Amount Awarded: $35,000
Project Summary: Central MN Sexual Assault Center (CMSAC) is a community partner with CentraCare in providing best practices care for individuals who have experienced sexual trauma. CMSAC manages the Community Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program. The RNs who have completed SANE training are expert Forensic Nurses employed by CMSAC. The SANE response to CentraCare – St. Cloud Hospital's ETC is established via contract. CMSAC advocates respond to all cases without charge, working as a team with SANE and ETC personnel. Most cases do present at St. Cloud Hospital, but the smaller number of cases presenting at other CentraCare sites deserve the same level of care. This project has a vision to hire a SANE to work with SANE program manager to develop and instruct an eight-hour course to RNs at CentraCare ETC sites where SANEs currently do not respond.

Submitting Agency: Operation Grace MN
Project Name: Bridging the Oral Health Care Gap
Amount Awarded: $25,000
Project Summary: “Bridging the Oral Health Care Gap” is designed to increase oral health care access for people who have no or very limited opportunities or resources to access essential dental care. This is the new clinic model of Operation Grace MN (OGMN). OGMN has strategically refocused resources to address a specific, easily identifiable target population in need of care. The target group is the 37.2 percent of all students in Minnesota K-12 education who have need for free and reduced-price lunch. Very few of this population have a means of acquiring private dental insurance nor can they afford private pay. Volunteer dental professionals have expressed great hope that this population combined with ongoing care and education offer the best hope for changing individual responsibility for their own oral health care."