HICKORY — On May 23, 13 Local CCHD grants totaling $36,250 were distributed at the 2019 Catholic Charities Local CCHD grant awards luncheon held at St. Aloysius Church.
CCHD is the acronym for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the domestic anti-poverty program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. This year’s grantees come from the following 11 cities: Black Mountain, Brevard, Charlotte, Forest City, Greensboro, Hendersonville, Hickory, High Point, Jefferson, Lenoir and Winston-Salem.
The grant awards luncheon began and closed with prayers offered respectively by St. Aloysius’s pastor, Father Lawrence LoMonaco, and Father Steve Hoyt, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church in Lenoir. A presentation on the work of CCHD, including data on poverty in the USA, was given by Ralph McCloud, CCHD National Director at the USCCB. Each of the grantees had the opportunity to share some highlights about their funded projects.
From the 25 percent of funds raised in the November CCHD collection across the Diocese of Charlotte, Catholic Charities annually offers local grants to fund non-profit projects in the diocese that are fighting poverty at the grassroots level. Many CCHD grant-funded organizations partner with diocesan parishes or other diocesan entities. Each grant applicant must submit a letter of endorsement from a Diocese of Charlotte entity which knows of the applicant’s work. The 2020 Local CCHD Grant deadline will be Feb. 17, 2020. Grant guidelines and applications will be available Dec. 2 at www.ccdoc.org/cchdcrs.
— Joseph Purello, Special to the Catholic News Herald. Joseph Purello is director of Catholic Charities’ Office of Social Concerns and Advocacy and diocesan director for CCHD.
Learn more about poverty in the U.S.
CCHD has a complementary mission of educating about domestic poverty and its causes at both the national and local level. PovertyUSA.org, an educational resource of CCHD available in English and Spanish, seeks to educate and promote understanding about poverty in the USA and its root causes. Go to PovertyUSA.org for resources such as: prayers, a poverty quiz, K-12 educational activities, stories of hope, and an interactive map of the USA that illustrates the extent of poverty at state and county levels.