Catholic Charities receives $750,000 for Unity Square
By Kathleen Ogle
Managing Editor
NEW BRUNSWICK — Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen, received a project-launching grant for its resident-led revitalization initiative for Unity Square, a low-income neighborhood.
Representatives from the Wachovia Regional Foundation stopped by Sacred Heart Parish — located within the Unity Sqare neighborhood — March 28 to present Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen, executive director Marianne Majewski with a check for $750,000.
Unity Square is 37 square city blocks bordered by Commercial and Livingston Avenues and Sanford and Welton Streets. The funding will implement a plan developed by residents and community leaders of the primarily Latino and African American neighborhood, which has a population of 5,900 people, of which 24 percent live in poverty.
The plan will develop affordable housing, create opportunities for economic development and enhance social services, parks and recreation.
Initial planning for the neighborhood revitalization began two years ago with a series of neighborhood meetings in which residents and representatives of community organizations spoke of their needs and hopes for the future.
Sacred Heart pastor Father Joseph J. Kerrigan described the Unity Square Partnership as “a new chapter” in the history of the parish.
“It’s a new day for ourselves as a church and way of being church in New Brunswick. It’s a new day certainly for our neighbors to take charge of their lives, and it’s a new day for New Brunswick, a new way of developing and transforming lives,” Father Kerrigan said.
Established in 1998, Wachovia Regional Foundation’s primary mission is to support resident-led community revitalization in New Jersey, Delaware and eastern Pennsylvania.
Suzanne Svizeny, Wachovia regional president and Wachovia Regional Foundation board member, who presented the check, said the foundation has awarded more than $41 million in grants to more than 120 nonprofit organizations since its inception.
Msgr. William Benwell, vicar general of the Diocese of Metuchen and chairman of the board of trustees for Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen, called the grant a “great and generous gift.”
“For those of us who go by the name of Catholic, for those of us who bear the name Christian, there is no more authentic way that we live our faith, that we give credible witness to our faith, then when we are honoring God and in the process of that honoring, respecting, assisting our brothers and sisters — of all races, of all faiths, but particularly those who are marginalized, those who are poor, those who have any special spiritual, emotional or physical need,” Msgr. Benwell said.
“On the night before he died, in his summing up of his life and ministry, what he was sent by the Father to do, which we as Christians recall a week from tomorrow on Holy Thursday, Jesus said this is how people will know you for my disciples, your love for one another.
“Hopefully, no, confidently, I know we will be loving our brothers and sisters, empowering our brothers and sisters through this great project, Unity Square.”
Msgr. Benwell also read a letter from New Jersey’s Department of Community Affairs commissioner Susan Bass Levin informing Catholic Charities that the revitalization plan for the Unity Square Neighborhood has been approved.
State approval of the plan, according to Nancy Finn, a member of the pastoral staff at Sacred Heart Parish as well as program manager for the Unity Square Partnership, means that Catholic Charities will be able to apply for grants for projects within the plan up to $1 million per year over a 10-year period.
The neighborhood revitalization plan includes renovating sub-standard housing for rental or ownership for qualified low-income residents, a micro-lending program administered through Accion that provides loans to individuals interested in developing small businesses as well as providing financial literacy training, scholarships to Elijah’s Promise Culinary Institute, child care training for in-home providers, a recreational area for teens, and immigration and health care services.
Marlene Sigman, director of Property Development and Management at Catholic Charities, Diocese of Metuchen, said housing is a major area of focus due to “overcrowding and overpriced housing in the community; it’s a terrible, terrible situation.”
Catholic Charities already offers a variety of services within and adjacent to the neighborhood including St. John’s Clinic, the Ozanam Men’s Shelter and before- and afterschool programs.
The Unity Square Revitalization Project also received a $10,000 grant from North Fork Bank Foundation for an intern who will help with housing development as well as funding from the Department of Community Affairs’ Housing Scholars Program for another intern as well.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law