DRUG-PREVENTION PROGRAM RECEIVES $25,000

Millennium Circle Fund Votes to Give a Grant to Luzerne-Wyoming
Counties Drug and Alcohol Program.

WILKES-BARRE -- A group of community-minded Luzerne County residents
on Tuesday afternoon voted to award a $25,000 grant to help tout
drug and alcohol prevention messages among area schoolchildren.

The money will allow the Luzerne-Wyoming Counties Drug and Alcohol
Program to deliver anti-drug lessons to 13 school districts, said
Michael Donahue, the program's director.

"If we don't talk to our kids about drugs, the dealers will,"
Donahue told members of the Millennium Circle Fund, an area
philanthropic group.

In all, group members heard grant requests from six organizations
during a series of rapid-fire presentations at the Genetti Hotel &
Convention Center.

Each nonprofit organization's representative was allotted two
minutes to explain how it would use the grant and about two minutes
to answer questions from the audience.

The Millennium Circle began in 1999 and, leading up to Tuesday's
event, had bestowed five grants totaling $65,000. Prior recipients
include Candy's Place, a cancer resource center in Forty Fort, and
the McGlynn Learning Center, an after-school program for children
living in a Wilkes-Barre housing complex.

The Millennium Circle -- a project of the Luzerne Foundation --
consists of more than 300 area groups and individuals who each have
contributed a one-time gift of $2,000. Their combined cash gets
invested in a single fund, producing yearly income that is donated
to local causes.

Fund promoters eventually hope to sign up 2,000 contributors,
amassing a total pool of $4 million. That sum would generate enough
money to give annual gifts of $200,000 or more, they said.

Rusty Flack, the foundation's board chairman, referred to the
Millennium Circle Fund as "one of the most active and one of the
most visible funds in the community."

Millennium Circle members become eligible to nominate projects and
to vote for a favorite one from among the finalists.

About 25 nominations were submitted for consideration in 2006. A
committee of Millennium Circle members, who had been selected at
random, picked this year's half dozen finalists.

They included the Commission on Economic Opportunity, the Salvation
Army's Kirby Family House and the Interfaith Clinic at St. Stephen's
Episcopal Church. Other contenders were the startup Hispanic
Resource Network Center for Community Initiatives and the
Little Theatre of Wilkes-Barre.

Millennium Circle membership is open to individuals, families, civic
organizations and other groups, even loose-knit bunches such as golf
foursomes and card clubs. Several area businesses, including the
Times Leader, also belong to the circle.

GET INVOLVED

To join the Millennium Circle Fund, call the Luzerne Foundation at
822-5420 or (877) 589-3386.