Patch Picks: Non-Profit Groups Making a Difference in South Brunswick

Each Thursday, South Brunswick Patch offers Patch Picks, highlighting editor and reader picks of great local businesses, destinations, services, organizations, ways to spend a day off, and more.

You’ll find useful lists to help you, your family, friends, and significant others find the best places for everything from Sunday brunch to New Year’s Eve celebrations, pumpkin patches, date night destinations, florists, nights out with your significant other, kids party places, parks and more.  

This week we take a look at five non-profit groups in South Brunswick making a difference in the community.  Whether it be providing resources for the less fortunate, extra funding for education or independence for adults with developmental disabilities, here are five local non-profit groups working to make South Brunswick a better place.

Patch Picks: Non Profit Groups

1. South Brunswick Food Pantry

As part of South Brunswick Township's Social Services Department, the Food Pantry relies on donations from the community to provide food and personal needs products year round for the less fortunate.  Social Services also holds the annual holiday Adopt-a-Family program to provide gifts to families in need.  In addition, the Human Intervention Trust Fund provides emergency money for people in need to pay utility bills or to provide emergency housing.  732-329-4000 Ext. 7674.

2. Citizens for Independent Living

The provides training and housing for developmentally disabled adults in South Brunswick.  The group, which started in 1984, initially operated as a training program designed to help these adults become productive members of the working world by assisting them to get entry-level jobs.  The CIL expanded to provide housing in 1993 with the CIL Woods apartment complex on Route 522.  732-329-1167.

3. The Education Foundation of South Brunswick

seeks to provide educational support and opportunities for students through innovative programs and projects that fall outside of the district's operational budget.  The foundation seeks to supplement innovative ideas of teachers or district staff members with funding that allows them to try new approaches to benefit the students of South Brunswick.  The foundation also funds equipment and facilities not that are not funded through other means.  http://www.edfoundationsb.org/ 

4. The Friends of the South Brunswick Public Library

The Friends of the SBPL was formed in 1980 to provide programs and services that cannot be funded through the regular library operating budget. These include programs for children, teens and adults, and scholarship awards for volunteers.  http://www.sbpl.info/friends/join.htm 

5. The Amy Foundation

The Amy Feiman Behar Foundation was created to provide mammograms for the early detection and treatment of breast cancer for uninsured women.  The foundation was started by friends and family of South Brunswick resident Amy Feiman Behar, who died March 2007 after a six year battle with breast cancer.  The foundation not only offers free screening for uninsured woman, but also promotes awareness for the importance of early detection.  info@theamyfoundation.org.