Press Release

To:        All Bloomington Media Outlets

From:    Monroe County Citizen Corps

Date:     September 24, 2004

LOCAL CITIZEN CORPS FUNDED THROUGH 2005

      Monroe County Citizen Corps was awarded a $17,671 grant to support local emergency preparedness initiatives to educate the public on the potential of floods, winter storms, tornadoes, terrorism and hazard material releases.  According to Corps Chair Mark Brostoff, “…this grant award recognizes the hard work of the Citizen Corps volunteers and represents a 200% increase in grant allocations from last year.  It will allow us to reach more households throughout Monroe County as well as to work more effectively with our affiliate partners.”

            According to the grant application, “there is a growing need for additional bilingual services (translators, publications, etc) especially in educating the public on emergency preparedness, and this will be one area that the Citizen Corps will be focusing on in the near future.”

The grant funds were part of the nationwide grant of more than $40 million for Citizen Corps distributed to state and local programs.  This funding will be available until September 30, 2005.

“The partnerships that the Monroe County Citizen Corps has developed are essential to educating citizens with family disaster preparedness, fire safety, neighborhood watch programs, etc.   Planned community-wide initiatives, crime prevention, neighborhood watch programs, Medical Reserve Corps and other volunteer recruitment programs will be undertaken.  Working closely with volunteer agencies like RSVP, American Red Cross, and municipal agencies like the County Health Department are essential to the success of the various Citizen Corps programs,” Brostoff stated.

            Georgia Schaich of RSVP of Monroe County is part of the Citizen Corps because “…we are committed to finding creative ways we can help prepare our community for all sorts of disaster related challenges big and small, the continued funding of this program is great news for Monroe County and Bloomington residents.”

            The grant guidance process and distribution mechanism has been very easy for us, since the Monroe County Commissioners and County Council have enthusiastically supported our efforts, Brostoff continued.  Brostoff concluded that there will be exciting developments in the year ahead and volunteers may register online at www.bloomington.in.us/~mccc/ or contact Mark Brostoff at mbrostof@indiana.edu