McCarthy Heart Hats Names 2 Grant Recipients and Project Winner in Phoenix

Nov. 28, 2012 - PRLog -- McCarthy Southwest, a Phoenix-based division of McCarthy Building Companies, has awarded two grants and an in-kind project recipient via its Heart Hats community outreach program. Children’s Cancer Network and the Starbright Foundation will receive $20,000 each and UMOM New Day Centers will receive a new playground.

The grants and in-kind project are made possible thanks to the 24th annual McCarthy Heart Hats Charity Golf Classic, which is slated for Fri., Nov. 30, at the Arizona Biltmore Golf Course in Phoenix. Major sponsors of this year’s tournament include Powers Steel & Wire Products and Blount Contracting.

“This year, our Heart Hats committee wanted to focus on nonprofits that support children and families in crisis,” said Lani Calbert, chair of the McCarthy Southwest Heart Hats committee. “After interviewing several organizations and reviewing dozens of grant applications, the Children’s Cancer Network and Starbright Foundation’s proposed projects stood out as providing the most impact to our community.”

Children’s Cancer Network provides financial, educational and psychosocial support to children and families in Arizona who are dealing with childhood cancer. The nonprofit also strives to increase awareness of pediatric cancer research and the need to find a cure for cancer. The $20,000 Heart Hats grant will be used to fund the nonprofit’s various adopt-a-family programs, including the back-to-school program that provides clothing, uniforms and school supplies to families in need who have a child diagnosed with cancer, as well as a program that provides beds, linens and pillows to those in need. The funds will also support the “Holiday Surprises” adopt-a-family initiative that fulfills the wish lists of families identified by hospital social workers.

Starbright Foundation rescues children in metro Phoenix from abusive situations, including sex trafficking and other dangerous and abusive environments, in association with local law enforcement and governing authorities. The foundation will use its $20,000 grant to install fire sprinklers at a local safe house for victims of child abuse, which will enable the nonprofit to increase its housing capacity for these young victims who receive long-term counseling and care from the foundation.

Prior recipients of Heart Hats grants include Family Promise, Angels on Patrol, UMOM New Day Centers, Phoenix Youth at Risk, Habitat for Humanity, Salute a Soldier Foundation, Gabriel’s Angels, Tempe/Kyrene Communities in Schools and Crisis Nursery.

In addition to the two grants, McCarthy also selected UMOM New Day Centers (http://www.umom.org/) as the recipient of this year’s hands-on volunteer project. McCarthy Heart Hats volunteers will remove the outdated and unsafe structure and install a new playground for the nearly 90 children residing at UMOM’s Casa de Paz Fillmore. The team will also get rid of the sand, install a new playground surface, paint the basketball court and ramada, install a watering system and plant new vegetation. The project is scheduled to begin February 2013 and will be completed within 4-6 weeks.

ABOUT MCCARTHY HEART HATS

The McCarthy Heart Hats community involvement program is dedicated to encouraging, supporting and recognizing McCarthy employees' volunteer efforts in a variety of causes to ensure real needs are being met in communities where employees live and work.  McCarthy employees are as passionate about building better communities as they are about construction. In addition to recognizing outstanding employee volunteers and providing a company-wide paid volunteer day, McCarthy Heart Hats volunteers donate countless hours of in-kind services and monetary contributions to improve communities each year.

ABOUT MCCARTHY BUILDING COMPANIES

Founded in 1864, McCarthy is the nation’s 8th largest domestic builder (Engineering News-Record, May 2012). The McCarthy Southwest Division is based in Tempe, Ariz. McCarthy also has offices in Newport Beach, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco, Calif.; Las Vegas; Albuquerque; Dallas and Houston, Texas; St. Louis and Atlanta. McCarthy is 100 percent employee-owned.  More information about the company is available at www.mccarthy.com.