The Erie Women’s Fund has awarded its largest annual grant of $100,000 to the Multicultural Community Resource Center (MCRC), providing a major investment in programs that support refugees and legal immigrants as they build new lives in Erie.<\/p>\n
The MCRC serves more than 3,000 refugees and legal immigrants each year through educational, social, housing, and employment programs. Executive Director Katie Kretz said the grant’s impact will reach far beyond the women who participate in those services.<\/p>\n
“It tells them that they’re not simply arriving in the community, but they’re becoming a part of it,” Kretz said.<\/p>\n
She said one of the most rewarding parts of the organization’s work is watching families transform in a relatively short period of time.<\/p>\n
“To be at the airport receiving the family, and seeing how they are in their first couple of days where they’re exhausted from travel, they’re kind of shocked at what their new life looks like, to being able to be employed, and their children enrolled in schools, and working on purchasing a home, it’s really amazing to see how quickly these families adapt to their new life here in the United States,” Kretz said.<\/p>\n
The Erie Women’s Fund has operated for 19 years and has awarded approximately $1.4 million to community organizations during that time. The organization uses a collective giving model, allowing women throughout the community to combine their contributions and award them to local nonprofit organizations.<\/p>\n
“We have a collective giving model, so women in the community that are passionate about women and families in Erie are able to join at whatever level works for them, and then we pool that money, and we’re able to give it out every year,” said Allison Hodas, chair of steering for the Erie Women’s Fund.<\/p>\n
The $100,000 award is the largest grant the Erie Women’s Fund presents each year. Nonprofit organizations competed for the funding by presenting their proposals, with members ultimately selecting the Multicultural Community Resource Center as this year’s recipient.<\/p>\n
Kretz said the funding will allow the organization to expand opportunities for refugee and immigrant women in a supportive environment.<\/p>\n
“We are elated. We’re super excited that the Erie Women’s Fund is trusting us with this project, and that they believe in our project, and that we’re going to be able to continue serving women in a women-only atmosphere so that they can become contributing members to society and really help elevate their families,” she said.<\/p>\n
The Multicultural Community Resource Center is already planning a new event for April 2027 as it continues expanding its services with the help of the grant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Erie Women’s Fund has awarded its largest annual grant of $100,000 to the Multicultural Community Resource Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137,146,95095,34376,296,139,24173],"class_list":["post-256028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-grant","tag-grant-awards","tag-grant-funding","tag-local","tag-news","tag-refugees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}