United Way Of Defiance County Incorporated

The back pack buddy program is a weekend food program for children enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program at eight elementary schools in defiance county and younger siblings at home not attending school. Each weekend during the academic year a back pack with kid friendly, nutritious food is sent home with the enrolled children. On average almost 500 back packs are stuffed weekly providing food for the children.

The united way of defiance county coordinated the 8th annual kindergarten camp at all 5 elementary schools. This program is a weeklong introduction to kindergarten for students who were screened as being "at-risk." 153 students attended the weeklong program. The monarch fund was established from monies designated to us by the promedica foundation. These funds are to be used for health related needs. Once we have a specific need we contact promedica and request use of the designated funds.

All other accomplishments other program service accomplishments include: the community engagement center, cec, a volunteer portal on the united way of defiance county website that connects volunteers with volunteer opportunities in our community. The cec has over 1,100 registered volunteers and 69 registered agencies with over 1,100 hours of community service coordinated or referred. The volunteer value of those volunteer hours is 38,269. Hosted the 11th annual dr. Seuss birthday celebration connecting 105 volunteers to local elementary school classrooms to read books aloud. In partnership with the united states postal service letter carriers, 31,000 pounds of food was collected for 7 food pantries in defiance county in a single day. Continued supporting the feeding success program which supplied a personal care and food pantry for each middle and high school in defiance county. The united way of defiance county is a fiscal sponsor for the women's giving circle of defiance county. The mission of the women's giving circle is to support projects that impact the lives of women and children. The imagination library distributed 15,494 new books to 1,500 children aged birth to 5 through the dolly parton imagination library program, with more than 2,300 children graduating since 2009.