A $10,000 grant means more opportunities to help those in need for the United Methodist Church of Sun City Center’s congregation.
The church received the funding for its Bare Necessities for All project, an initiative which gives those in need exactly that — the basic things they need.
Victoria Sorensen, the church’s director of ministry, said the project will reach the people in the community who go unseen: seniors, veterans, homeless and even youth populations.
“We’re in Sun City Center, which everybody knows is a retirement community, but Sun City Center has been growing,” Sorensen said.
She identified a growing need as well, with vulnerable populations in Wimauma, Gibsonton, Riverview and Ruskin in need of support from the Bare Necessities for All project.
“I was really taken back about the poverty level and how the rate of poverty in this area continues to grow and how difficult it is for our seniors, our homeless, our veterans and even our young people to just get through day by day,” she said.
Even before the grant, the project had the support it needed to make this assistance possible. Church members and people from the community were generous donors, but the grant is the additional financial support that the project needs to grow.
“With this large amount of money, we are going to be able to touch so many different areas with so many different people this time,” Sorensen said.
Specifically, it means the project can reach beyond its 10-mile radius and into the neighboring vulnerable populations.
She knew the grant from the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay wasn’t guaranteed but prayed her church would receive it because she can’t ‘unsee’ the need in her community.
“I’ve personally seen, since I’ve been here, the number of people living out of their cars,” she said. “I’m trying to target the people who need the most help with just surviving day to day.”
Tearing up, she said maybe she hasn’t personally experienced this need, but she knows she needs to do something to help.
“It’s one of those things that I can’t unsee it,” Sorensen said. “I cannot be a person that walks by.”
