October 17, 2008 the Public Welfare Foundation announced its new grants. United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities (USMWF) was one of 28 grantees, awarded $162,000 over the next 2 years.
I was going to get into more however I will do that in the next news letter. I am in the process of ceasing my other obligations to finally go full time with USMWF and get to a little more than the emailing side of things. For right now you can view our Press Release
We have had some wonderful offers to help with some of the small and tedious task and with the generous grant from the Public Welfare foundation we will be able to get so much more work done.
I know thing are slow but it seems that emotions come in waves and if something was left out of the circle it couldn’t be my people. Having said that I wanted to add a little reminder of why we have worked so long and hard on USMWF.
These next few months are always a reminder of just how important our work is. I start getting emails from mid October all of whom are devastated over spending the holidays without their family member. I received this email last night.
“Hey girl, been travelling all over East Texas and been by the site where my brother was killed, several times. You're the only person I can turn to when the world seems dark. Tammy, I miss him sooooo much it just rips me shreds and its a real physical pain that I feel in my heart! I wish someone could tell me that it would go away. Even if someone could say that I don't think I would ever belief it. I just miss him so much. I long to hear his voice on the phone, just anything. Thanks for being there.”
All too often the families feel alone and it is up to USMWF to make sure they stay healthy and go on while trying to instill in them how important it is to stay involved once they are in the position to do so.
I would also like to add a little about what the Public Welfare foundation is about. It really is an interesting orginazation. This is a brief and taken from the Public Welfare Foundations web site. He seemed to be an intereesting man.
Charles Edward Marsh made a formal commitment to philanthropy by incorporating the Public Welfare Foundation and designating it to receive his newspapers' assets upon his death. He deliberately chose a vague name to allow the Foundation to evolve with the times. According to Anonymous Giver, a biography of Marsh by Philip Kopper, Marsh wrote that "public welfare" was "a pretty wide pair of words," by which he intended the Foundation to involve itself in "any activity which would promote the well-being and happiness of human beings." A document drafted at the time, according to Kopper, declared that the Foundation would make "gifts for education, charitable or benevolent uses in accordance with a plan which shall meet the changing need for such gifts with flexibility...."
The Foundation's first grant was made in 1948 - 28 sewing machines for an organization of Jamaican women, so that the island's poor children could be clothed and sent to school. Marsh saw to it that the Foundation followed up with funding for scholarships and occupational training, medical equipment, clinics and - ahead of the times - micro-loans for fishermen. As the Foundation grew, Marsh built a network of "agents" assigned to find worthwhile recipients: among them, according to Kopper, the young Indira Gandhi, Mother Teresa and the playwright Noel Coward.
Marsh oversaw the Foundation's work until his health began to decline in 1953. He died in 1964. Claudia Haines Marsh, his third wife, was the Foundation's president from 1952 to 1974, and she remained a guiding influence until her own death, at the age of 100, in the year 2000.
Charles Marsh's legacy - agility, daring, willingness to take on new and sometimes unpopular challenges, pragmatism and a profound belief in people - is very much alive in the Foundation's approach to grantmaking.
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