Presented to the Tri-County Board of Directors and
the Board of Directors of the Tri-County Foundation
May 2024

Project Hope officially concluded on April 29, 2024. We received 2 three-month extensions giving us a year and a half of impact on our community. I have completed my final report for FEMA which details all the elements of our program.

For your information, I want to briefly summarize the numbers, showing the impact that we had on the three counties that we served.

47,988 Contacts (the total number of people we engaged with)

• • Polk – 27,668 (58%)
  • Highlands – 13,447 (28%)
  • Hardee – 6,873 (14%)

30,233 Materials Distributed (brochures and/or fliers)

• • Polk – 12,019 (40%)
  • Highlands – 11,098 (37%)
  • Hardee – 7,116 (24%)

1,235 Encounters (people that we had a 15–30-minute conversation with)

• • Polk – 528 (43%)
  • Highlands – 379 (31%)
  • Hardee – 328 (27%)

458 Referrals (people referred to Tri-County for further counseling)

• • Polk – 245 (53%)
  • Highlands – 149 (33%)
  • Hardee – 64 (14%)

Of all our contacts, 2.57% resulted in an Encounter and 0.95% resulted in a Referral. 37% of all Encounters resulted in a Referral to Tri-County Human Services.

Respectfully Submitted,

Tom Hicks
Project Hope Program Manager