The Diocese of Davenport’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) board met Oct. 27 and distributed grants to three organizations:
• Clinton Council of Social Agencies, Getting Ahead program which works to lift people out of homelessness. Of 25 homeless individuals the program helped, only four remain homeless after a year. Getting Ahead uses a curriculum based on the framework of Ruby Payne, author of “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.” Some graduates of the program in turn assist other homeless people with child care and other responsibilities.
• Clean Air Muscatine (CLAM) is working for cleaner air in a heavily industrialized area in Muscatine. CLAM’s goal is to empower each person in Muscatine to share how poor air quality affects his or her life, and then act to change the root cause of these ill effects. The organization stated that it is a rare Muscatine family who has not been touched by asthma, cancer or a lingering respiratory ailment that local doctors have coined “the Muscatine Crud.” Muscatine is home to five major coal-fired facilities with a total of 13 coal boilers. CLAM claims the problem is compounded by “the bowl,” a natural area created by bluffs and hills.
• Quad Cities Interfaith in Davenport is currently working to make jobs available for minorities and low-income people in the Quad Cities when contracts are set for the passenger rail construction project from Chicago to Moline, Ill. The organization also has a task force working on immigration reform and has a CCHD intern whose goal is to organize youth to become community leaders.
Each year the CCHD collection is taken up in November. Twenty-five percent of the collection stays in the diocese and the remainder funds other organizations working to lift people out of poverty.
This year’s collection will be held Nov. 19-20.
