WSOS to seek money for education program

9/20/2004

FREMONT - The board of directors of the WSOS Community Action Commission agreed last week to seek more than $600,000 in county, state, and federal funding to support educational programs for children and training for members of the Civilian Conservation Corps at Camp Quilter.

The social service agency plans to request about $500,000 from the Ohio Department of Development, with most of the funds to be used to fund housing and support services for 50 participants in the CCC program.

The remainder of the grant, $54,215, would be used to provide transitional housing and other services to nine homeless families with children in Fremont.

WSOS also will ask the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for $50,000 to conduct a youth mentoring initiative between children in the Head Start program and the WIA Youth programs in Sandusky and Seneca counties. A $90,000 grant proposal to the Seneca County Department of Job and Family Services seeks funding to provide literacy services to 40 families.

The camp reopened earlier this year after a year's hiatus. WSOS restarted the residential program in June, with 10 residents, far fewer than the 40 corps members who lived at the 70-acre camp in 2003 before the shutdown.

The hearing on the requests from Garden Ridge Nursery is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Hubbard Family Banquet Room in the Serrick Campus Center at Defiance College.