Meet Our 2026-28 Empowerment Grant Partners
Education
Community Colleges
The College Promise Program (CPP) provides a comprehensive college access and success pipeline for low-income and first-generation students from Dover and Morristown High Schools. The program systematically removes the financial and informational barriers that typically prevent these students from enrolling in higher education.
Middlesex College Foundation | Ticket to Success: Bus Passes for At-risk Students ($10,000/year)
Addressing the critical challenge of campus accessibility, Middlesex College’s Ticket to Success initiative eliminates the physical transportation barriers that frequently derail higher education journeys by distributing NJ Transit single-ride bus passes equitably based on individual student needs.
Raritan Valley Community College’s (RVCC) Returning & Incarcerated Student Education (RISE) program provides rigorous associate degree coursework to individuals incarcerated across five New Jersey state correctional facilities, to bridge the gap between treatment and long-term economic mobility for those transitioning back to the community.
Special Education Services
ENHANCE Works is a therapeutic support program designed to help Ramapo College of New Jersey students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to succeed academically, socially, and personally. It provides weekly individualized therapy, peer mentoring, group support, and skill-building workshops focused on organization, time management, and self-advocacy.
Human Services
Housing Assistance
Anchor House | Housing Assistance Support ($12,500/year)
Anchor House serves as a vital safety net for runaway, homeless, and at-risk youth and young adults (ages 12 to 24) throughout Mercer County. The organization provides a continuous spectrum of care that includes 24/7 emergency shelter for minors, subsidized transitional housing and rapid re-housing programs for young adults, and an open-access street outreach drop-in center supplying meals, hygiene resources, and immediate crisis intervention.
The Affordable Housing Alliance (AHA) Homeless Services program integrates comprehensive intake, assessment, and community provider partnerships to provide unhoused individuals with basic dignity items, healthcare connections, and hospitality resources. AHA also delivers Short-Term Rapid Rehousing while pairing clients with HUD-certified housing counselors for financial education and budgeting skills that ensure lasting self-sufficiency and housing stability.
Center for Food Action NJ (CFA) | Homelessness Prevention Case Management Support ($12,500/year)
For 40+ years, CFA’s Homelessness Prevention Program has served low-income individuals and families in Bergen and Passaic Counties facing imminent eviction, utility disconnection, or the inability to access stable housing. Case managers conduct comprehensive intake and eligibility assessments, coordinate emergency rental arrears and utility payments, develop individualized Housing Stability Plans, provide financial coaching, screen for eligibility of benefits, and monitor client outcomes.
The Housing Resource Center (HRC) delivers a comprehensive, one-stop safety net that eliminates financial barriers to housing stability for low- and moderate-income Central Jersey residents, who make up 95% of its clientele. This initiative provides free, one-on-one guidance through HUD-certified counselors specializing in foreclosure prevention, rental education, housing rights discrimination, and senior housing support.
Family Promise of Morris County’s Bridge Housing Program provides a cost-effective, trauma-informed alternative to traditional shelters by utilizing local motel rooms to offer dignified, temporary accommodations for families and individuals, including those managing mental health conditions or physical disabilities. This low-barrier model prevents family separation during a housing crisis while delivering individualized, holistic case management designed to accelerate transitions into permanent, stable housing.
The Housing Hope Temporary Shelter program provides immediate crisis relief and housing assistance to individuals and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness by providing short-term emergency accommodations combined with trauma-informed, client-centered case management. The organization utilizes fully equipped temporary shelter units and local hotel placements to provide clients, who otherwise would be in unsheltered environments, with safety and respite from the chaos and trauma of housing insecurity.
P.A.R.T.N.E.R. | Housing Stability & Financial Resilience Program ($12,500/year)
P.A.R.T.N.E.R.’s Housing Stability & Financial Resilience Program is a comprehensive, client-centered initiative designed to prevent homelessness and guide low- to moderate-income households toward sustainable homeownership. As participants stabilize, they transition into long-term readiness services, including first-time homebuyer education and mortgage counseling, a model that directly aligns with the mission to expand affordable housing access and strengthen communities.
The Milestone House | Hopeful Housing: Building Recovery Through Stability ($10,000/year)
The Hopeful Housing program targets the critical need for affordable, supportive housing for individuals in early recovery from substance use disorders and co-occurring mental health challenges. By alleviating immediate financial pressures, Hopeful Housing allows participants to focus on gaining employment, resolving legal obligations, and rebuilding credit within a structured, substance-free “community-as-family” environment.
The Waterfront Project | Housing Stability & Empowerment Program ($10,000/year)
Through its cost-free Housing Stability & Empowerment Program, The Waterfront Project delivers the full spectrum of resources needed to secure and maintain affordable housing, including HUD-certified counseling for renters and homeowners, foreclosure prevention, financial counseling, eviction defense, and legal representation. Additionally, the program empowers the community by providing tenant rights education, advocacy, financial wellness workshops, and pre-purchase homebuyer education.
United Way of Northern New Jersey | ALICE Relief & Empowerment: Helping ALICE Families Maintain Housing ($17,500/year)
United Way’s ALICE Relief & Empowerment: Helping ALICE Families Maintain Housing program provides direct, short-term financial assistance to stabilize northern New Jersey households facing sudden crises like job loss, illness, or disasters. Targeting the state’s Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) population, which represents 29% of households earning too much for public assistance but too little to survive amid soaring rent and utility costs, the program acts as a critical intervention to prevent eviction, forced relocation, and homelessness.
Food Security
City Green | Farm to Pantry Food Donation Program ($12,500/year)
Operating since 2017, City Green’s Farm to Pantry program acts as a vital safety net across northern New Jersey by utilizing two regenerative farms to produce over 90,000 pounds of organic, culturally relevant produce annually for low-income neighborhoods and ten emergency food partners. To counter the growing demand fueled by inflation and reductions in SNAP and WIC funding, the initiative donates 15% of its total harvest, including vital winter storage crops to ensure year-round availability—allowing pantry shoppers in six counties to choose healthy, fresh food over shelf-stable goods.
The Family and Children’s Service (FCS) Food Outreach Program addresses a critical gap in senior nutrition by delivering groceries and prepared meals directly into the kitchens of homebound, food-insecure older adults, rather than leaving them at the front door. Utilizing trusted Home Care Aides to assist with meal preparation, the program significantly improves health and mental health outcomes for vulnerable seniors.
Interfaith Food Pantry Network | Healthy Food Access and Nutrition Education ($20,000/year)
IFPN utilizes client-choice marketplaces, free farmers markets, home deliveries, and a Mobile Pantry Network of 40 local partners to distribute fresh produce, dairy, and lean proteins directly to where individuals live and gather. By integrating nutrition workshops and cooking demonstrations alongside food rescue operations with local farms and retailers, the program actively reduces transportation and financial barriers, prevents food waste, and improves overall household stability and health outcomes for thousands of residents.
The JFCS Food Pantry program is designed to be accessible, client-focused, and healthy, utilizing two main models to distribute groceries. Clients can select fresh produce, dairy, frozen meats, and non-perishable staples using digital scheduling apps like Plentiful. JFCS also uses a mobile pantry truck to bring groceries directly into local neighborhoods, breaking down transportation barriers.
Lunch Break | Your Choice Food Pantry ($15,000/year)
Lunch Break’s Your Choice pantry distributes food to food-insecure residents of Monmouth County. Like a grocery store, clients are given a cart to select food from shelves stocked with canned and dry goods, as well as from refrigerators and freezers stocked with fresh and frozen foods. A wide variety of fresh produce is available year-round, providing healthy, nutritious fruits and vegetables for the county’s food-insecure population.
From mobile markets and home deliveries to the pantry partners and Citrus Initiative sites embedded in schools, community organizations, and trusted local institutions, to the coalition coordination that keeps 90+ organizations working in alignment, MEND’s food distribution operations form a comprehensive county-wide response to food insecurity. Funding will support staff capacity to coordinate MEND on the Move mobile markets and home deliveries, sustaining programming that directly served 99,554 individuals in 2025, as well as Pantry Partnerships coordination, including the Pantry Advisory Board and supply chain management for 26 partner pantries across Essex County.
New Bethany | Nutritious Food Access Programming ($20,000/year)
New Bethany’s nutritious food access programming takes a two-pronged approach to health and welfare. At the Drop-in Center, guests receive a hot, nutritious meal alongside access to critical street-level resources like laundry facilities, showers, and monthly on-site check-ups from the Lehigh Valley Health Network Street Medicine Team. The Choice Food Pantry allows individuals to select a three-day monthly supply of fresh produce, lean proteins, and dairy tailored to their health, cultural, or religious preferences, while providing portable snack bags for those experiencing homelessness without access to a kitchen.
Farmers Against Hunger connects local working farms with food-insecure families by distributing free, surplus, and imperfect produce through trusted community partners. By delivering farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, the initiative improves household nutrition and budgets while addressing immediate hunger and long-term health outcomes, ensuring reliable access to nutritious food for economically vulnerable New Jersey residents.
Rescuing Leftover Cuisine | Food Rescue Expansion and Corporate Engagement ($12,500/year)
The Food Rescue Expansion & Corporate Engagement Program connects excess, high-quality food from local businesses and corporate partners to community-based organizations that help to distribute it to people facing food insecurity, ensuring that food is not wasted but instead reaches those who can benefit from it. This program model maximizes existing resources by recovering surplus food and redistributing it efficiently through trusted local partners, creating a sustainable and scalable solution to hunger.
The Healthy Meal Express is designed to provide specialized service for the more than 100 seniors and adults with health concerns who are registered at the WTCARES Living Faith Food Pantry, located within a two-block radius of one of Bayonne’s designated food deserts. The pantry serves food to over 3,000 adults and children each month.
York Street Project | The Nurturing Place Food Security ($12,500/year)
The Nurturing Place (TNP), York Street Project’s early childhood development center in Jersey City, fills a critical gap by serving nutritious meals and snacks to enrolled children aged birth to five. For many of these children, the meals they receive at TNP are their most reliable source of consistent, healthy food each day.
Healthcare Access for Un-/Underinsured Individuals
Clara Maass Foundation | Open Doors to Health: Puerta Abierta a la Salud ($12,500/year)
Open Doors to Health: Puerta Abierta a la Salud is a community-based initiative led by the Center of Excellence for Latino Health at Clara Maass Medical Center that provides direct, barrier-free access to healthcare for uninsured and underinsured individuals through recurring Same-Day Care Access Clinics. These clinics are delivered in partnership with municipal Departments of Health, bringing clinical care into trusted, community-based settings.
The KinderSmile Oral Health Program (KSOHP) Link to a Dental Home is a community-based initiative designed to eliminate barriers to oral health care for underserved children and families across New Jersey. This program brings preventive dental services directly into schools and community settings ensuring that children, particularly those who are uninsured, underinsured, or enrolled in Medicaid, receive care where they already are.
Medina Health Center | Rooted in Community, Driven by Care ($10,000/year)
Serving low-income individuals, Medina Health Center provides accessible, low-cost primary care and serves as a coordinated access point to additional services. Patients receive primary care and are then guided through the next steps in their care. This includes coordination with specialty providers for conditions such as diabetes-related complications, connections to behavioral health services, and support with transportation to ensure they can attend appointments.
Youth Mental Health
The Zone is a school-based mental health and youth development program that provides direct, accessible support to 7th and 8th grade students during the school day, addressing a full spectrum of youth mental health needs from prevention to early intervention and crisis response. Students receive individual and group counseling, participate in social-emotional learning activities, and engage in structured enrichment that promotes emotional well-being, healthy relationships, and academic success.
Child Focus | New Jersey Safe Babies Court Team ($12,500/year)
Child Focus champions the best interests of infants, children, and teens impacted by or at risk of abuse or neglect. NJSBCT is an initiative that protects and promotes the mental health and developmental well-being of infants and toddlers involved in the child welfare system, providing intensive, trauma-informed support to children from birth to age three while strengthening the court and child welfare practices that shape every decision made on their behalf.
Sanar Wellness Institute | Healing Pathways: Addressing Complex Trauma for NJ Youth Survivors ($12,500/year)
Sanar’s Wellness Center provides long-term, trauma-specific mental health care for survivors of violence. This program focuses on adolescents and young adults (ages 13–24) who are at heightened risk due to exposure to violence and system involvement to break cycles of violence and build resilient communities.
Workforce Development
Vocational Programs
Capital Health Foundation | Emergency Medical Technician Academy ($15,000/year)
Capital Health’s EMT Academy prepares community members for careers as Emergency Medical Technicians at no cost while building a sustainable workforce pipeline for regional emergency services. The Academy, centered on an “earn as you learn” platform, provides EMT certification training to participants from Trenton/Mercer County, NJ, and Bucks County, PA, where unemployment and poverty rates exceed state and national averages.
Employment Supports
Freedom House | Employment Support Program ($15,000/year)
Freedom House’s Employment Support Program is a comprehensive, recovery-centered initiative that combines counseling, case management, and workforce development into a single, coordinated pathway to help individuals with substance use and co-occurring disorders achieve long-term economic mobility. The program removes critical obstacles to employment by providing participants with job readiness training, safe housing, work attire, transportation assistance, and essential identification documents.
Riis Forward is a 12-week workforce development program serving diverse, low-income youth in western Queens through recruitment, professional development workshops, wraparound case management, and paid internships designed to transition into regular employment.
Our House Foundation | SkillsUp Pre-Vocational Training for Adults with Developmental Disabilities ($10,000/year)
To combat the high rates of unemployment faced by adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities aging out of the school system, the SkillsUp Pre-Vocational Training Program offers a progressive, two-year curriculum that integrates classroom instruction, visual supports, and weekly simulations across five vocational pathways, including retail, food services, and computer administration. The program transitions students from foundational learning into hands-on external internships, resume development, and interview prep.
Project Self-Sufficiency | The Bridges to Employment Program ($15,000/year)
The Bridges to Employment Program transitions low-income, unemployed or underemployed individuals into stable careers. This initiative utilizes a diverse spectrum of onsite, mobile, and virtual resources to meet job seekers at their level of need and removes systemic barriers to employment by including support such as funding for car repairs, occasional donated vehicles, and access to safe, affordable childcare.
The G.I. Go Fund | Employment Support Program at Jackson Drysdale Center ($10,000/year)
GI Go Fund’s employment support program provides individualized, ongoing assistance to veterans, first responders, military families, and underserved civilians at every stage of the employment journey, from the earliest steps of a job search through the critical months that follow a placement.
The Career Empowerment Program is a workforce development initiative that helps low- and moderate-income individuals gain the skills and support needed to find and keep stable employment. The program prepares participants for the job market through hands-on training in resume writing, interviewing, and digital literacy, along with ESL and citizenship education.
Reentry Programs
SELF! LV | Pathways Home Reentry Case Management Program ($10,000/year)
The Pathways Home Reentry Case Management Program is an individualized case management initiative for women returning home from incarceration and families impacted by the criminal legal system across the Lehigh Valley. The Pathways Home Case Manager serves as an advocate, meeting women where they are, setting individualized goals, and coordinating services across existing programs including Reentry Navigation & Support, SELF! House transitional housing, family reunification services, employment readiness, and community outreach.