TAMPA — Tampa United Methodist Centers’ (TUMC) SHARE Florida ministry has been named Agency of the Year for 2002-03 by Hands On Tampa Bay, or HOT, a United Way agency that unites volunteers with community projects.

Self-Help and Resource Exchange, or SHARE, is a program of Tampa United Methodist Centers sponsored by TECO, Tampa Electric Company.

SHARE is a food program implemented in every state and many places around the world by host sites. Each host site allows families to receive about $30 worth of groceries for $14.50 and two hours of volunteer community service. Approximately 20,000 families per month are active in the program.

Lorena Rivas, project manager for HOT, said the award started six years ago as a way to honor the agencies whose commitment to HOT goes “way above their call of duty.”

“Volunteers feel welcome and needed at SHARE,” Rivas said. “They always leave with a sense of accomplishment, and they understand the agency’s needs and mission.”

Rivas said volunteers praised SHARES’s “family friendly” environment.

For more information visit http://www.ShareFlorida.com or call 1-800-536-3379.

LAKELAND — Since the Council of Bishops’ Initiative on Children and Poverty (BICAP) was created in 1996, nearly $400,000 has been given in the Florida Conference by local churches and more than $340,000 has been allocated by the conference’s BICAP Task Force to Florida Conference ministries focused on children and families.

BICAP began when the Council of Bishops called upon The United Methodist Church to reshape its life in response to the crisis among children and the impoverished.

Although the quadrennium ended in 2000, the Council of Bishops extended the initiative for another four years, which means the church will continue to receive money and allocate grants to local church ministries.

Keeping pace with BICAP is the denomination-wide Hope for Children of Africa (HCA). More than $380,000 has been collected for HCA by the Florida Conference since the ministry’s inception in 2000.

Part of the conference’s BICAP ministry includes Children’s Harvest. At the 2002 Florida Annual Conference Event, churches participated in Children’s Harvest by donating 2,000 health kits, 730 school kits, more than 200 reams of paper and more than $7,300, which was distributed to Florida Conference outreach ministries and the Methodist Church of Haiti. In 2003, churches gave enough money to purchase 3,000 school kits for the East Angola Conference.