U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean speaks on value in federal funding for community projects

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Montgomery County) visited the Resilience Resource Center in Huntingdon Valley on Thursday. The nonprofit provides mental health services, career training and a community space for LGBTQ+ youth and other marginalized communities.

Dean made a case for federal funding for the center and similar organizations, saying they fill a need. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) this year requested $350,000 in federal funding for the center, which was founded in 2023. This marks the first federal grant the center has applied for.

Such new funding, however, has been delayed by the lack of a national budget. The government is set to shut down next month if Congress does not pass an appropriations bill. Currently, the government is operating off a series of temporary spending measures called “continuing resolutions.”

“Community project funding has been utterly derailed by our failure to pass a budget,” Dean said during a tour of the center. “Continuing resolution after continuing resolution, after continuing resolution. You can’t run a nonprofit that way. You can’t run a business that way. This is utterly irresponsible.”

The Resilience Resource Center, according to its website, “focuses its work on programs that foster and build resilience skills in marginalized communities” and offers “accessible mental health services, fostering safe-space community and educational environments.”

Dean spent nearly an hour at the center listening to staff and parents of youth who utilize its services. These young people, many of whom are LGBTQ+, including queer and transgender adolescents, shared how the center offers them a safe space to express their authentic selves within the community.

“This place feels like family both to my child and to me,” one parent told Dean.

Joseph Torre, who serves as the center’s finance director and a board member, also provides youth counseling. He said recent political and cultural trends have made the center all the more essential.

“They’re terrified and they have every reason to be because people are singling them out, putting them in bills, legislating them out of existence,” Torre said. “So how do you not be terrified?”

Torre said the center works on slim margins and that the $350,000 grant would provide 3,000 hours of pro bono mental health services and 900 support group hours — “a bargain in the mental health world,” he said.

Torre’s involvement with the Resilience Center was more than just professional; it marked a turning point in his own life. After suffering a heart attack, he left a career in human resources and found a new sense of purpose for his life.

“I sat down to myself and I said — what I often say to people I work with in therapy — what would you do if you could do anything you wanted to do?” he said. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? And I thought, ‘I’ve always wanted to do this.’ So I did.”

Torre returned to school and received a master’s degree in counseling psychology from Temple University, where he also earned a graduate certificate program in gender, sexuality and women’s studies.

“I wish I could have done it sooner in my career,” he said. “I work with a lot of people that are struggling with really important life issues. It’s an important responsibility. I feel privileged to be able to provide help in some way. So I really wake up every day excited to be doing what I’m doing.”

Torre provides his services to the center at “low cost or no cost,” adding, “I’m proud to say we’ve never turned anybody away based off their ability to pay.”

The center serves as a retreat with a game room, meditation room, popcorn machine and plentiful snacks. In addition to counseling, it also offers various group sessions.

Darrel Suarez-White, the center’s director of youth programming, leads art programs that include different projects each week, including painting on mirrors, murals, scrapbooking and decoupage.

“They love origami and beading,” he said.

Suarez-White added that art provides a meditative activity.

“Our feelings are more manageable when we have something tangible that we can attach to them,” he said, “whether that’s tangible in a sense of making something to destroy, to alleviate ourselves from those feelings or really pour those emotions into an artwork to get it out of our head and make something beautiful from whatever discordance we might be going through.”

Last month, Dean was appointed to the House Appropriations Committee, the powerful committee that decides the funding levels that federal government agencies and programs receive. She said she will take the center’s request up with U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the committee.

However, she added that it will be a fight.

“We are under such threat now with government funding and this wrecking ball approach that our public health and safety, the very things we’re talking about here for our children and our families, is at risk,” Dean said.

She pointed to the response to the SPS fire as a demonstration of how Washington and local communities should work together.

“Anytime we can showcase government working well with state, local county partners and nonprofits and companies that want to do good work, we have to keep lifting that up.”