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Note #7947 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

9/11 aid program shutting down
03402
September 23, 2003

9/11 aid program shutting down

New York Presbytery says requests for help had slowed to a trickle

By Evan Silverstein

LOUISVILLE - Because of a decline in requests for help, the Presbytery of New
York City has discontinued a program that provided thousands of dollars to
secondary victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The presbytery's Hub Churches Relief Program expired at the end of August,
according to Stan Hankins, the associate for U.S. disaster response of
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), who announced the shutdown during a
meeting of the PDA advisory committee in San Salvador, El Salvador, early in
September.

PDA provided most of the funds for the program, which was established in
April 2002 to provide emergency grants of as much as $4,000 to people who
lost jobs or income because of the attacks.

Overall, $700,835 was distributed to 561 residents of metropolitan New York,
and the aid was available to people of all faiths, according to Betty Jones,
the Presbyterian elder who supervised the program for the presbytery's office
of disaster relief.

The Hub Churches program disbursed $550,000 to 428 people in its first eight
months, Jones said. The money helped the affected families pay for such
necessities as food, utilities, rent and mental-health services.

Jones said an administrative commission appointed by the presbytery to manage
the Sept. 11 response made the decision to discontinue the program.

"We were getting fewer and fewer requests, the farther away we got from
9/11," Jones said.

Twelve Presbyterian churches in New York's five boroughs, staffed by social
workers and volunteers, served as distribution sites or "hubs" for the aid
program. The presbytery office on Riverside Drive in Manhattan also served as
a hub site.

Some of the hub locations have had no requests for assistance since July,
Jones said, and none of the others was getting more than 10 inquiries a week.
The program's final "clients" were seen on Aug. 29, and staff members expect
to work through the end of September closing down the program.

"We shut that down simply because the number of people coming in through that
process had really dropped off," Hankins said. "There's really a much more
effective way now of reaching some of the remaining needs through the New
York City Interfaith Needs Roundtable."

The Roundtable, like the hub program, was created after 9/11 to help victims
who didn't meet strict guidelines for federal assistance programs or qualify
for other public assistance.

The hub program was supported with part of $1.7 million the presbytery
received from PDA after the attacks, as well as $265,397 in donations from
PC(USA) congregations, presbyteries and individuals.

PDA has distributed nearly $4.2 million in Sept. 11-related relief, almost
half of it through New York City Presbytery. Hankins said Presbyterians
contributed $5.2 million to PDA in response to the attacks, which killed
about 3,000 people in New York and 200 in Washington.

Hankins noted that PDA funds, including a $200,000 grant in July, are still
helping low-income people in the nation's capital who are considered
secondary victims of the attacks - through a program called "Alexandrians
Involved Ecumenically (ALIVE!), based in Alexandria, VA.

Hankins said the $4.2 million PDA provided for Sept. 11 relief went to:
Presbytery of New York City, $1.7 million; Church World Service Trauma
Response Training, $610,000; Long Island Council of Churches, $496,000;
Presbytery of National Capital, $432,000; New Jersey Interfaith Partnership,
$220,000; New York City Teacher Training Retreats, $163,000; Bloomfield
College Student Counseling, $130,000; Asylum Legal Assistance, $115,000;
Interfaith Listening Project, $85,000; Military Family Support, $75,000; and
miscellaneous, $220,000.

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