Two Porterville area non-profits receive $10k each

Two Porterville area non-profits each have an extra $10,000 in their coffers to put toward their educational goals.

The money was awarded by the Tulare County Board of Supervisors, which allotted $100,000 dollars in grant money to non-profit organizations last week as part of the Step Up Youth Activities Grant Program.

Currently in its second year of operation, the Tulare County Youth Commission program is intended to support programs and services that work to improve the quality of life for at-risk youth.

The two recipients are the Porterville Education Foundation and WildPlaces, a Springville-based environmental group.

“I was just tickled to death that we got the money into our district and are helping people out,” District Five Supervisor Mike Ennis said.

In the program’s initial year, Ennis expressed frustration that his district was the only one to not receive funds.

Part of the $100,000 dollars available last year —$70,000 — was awarded to the other four districts.

According to Jeff Forbes, board representative for the Board of Supervisors and Youth Commission staff member, there was only one application from the Porterville area in the first round of funding. It did not score high enough in the review process to be awarded funds.

“I think it’s great because we had none last time,” Ennis said.

Grant applications were accepted in October and reviewed by six members of the Youth Commission. The reviewers’ scores were averaged by Forbes, who then passed them on to ad hoc subcommittees to divide the funds.

The Youth Commission, an advisory board to the Board of Supervisors, presented its funding recommendations to the board last week.

They were approved as submitted at the Dec. 7 Board of Supervisors meeting.

Forbes said the second year of funding didn’t yield many more applications, but they represented a wider geographical scope.

“There were more to choose from in District One and District Five,” he said.

Three out of the 24 applications received were from the district that encompasses Porterville.

For the first time, data regarding students who participate in the programs financed by the grant will be tracked.

Statistics including attendance, grades and behavior will be recorded.

Forbes said he hopes the data will be useful in the future to demonstrate the effectiveness of the programs supported by the Step Up program.

“The hope is that as a direct result the students participating are seeing improvement in all those areas,” he said.

-- Contact Sarah de Crescenzo at 784-5000, Ext. 1045, or sdecrescenzo@portervillerecorder.com.