I met a business owner yesterday who is a clown. She told me the grant money is FLOWING for clowns to go to schools and other non-profits. We had a discussion about how my mom recently received a grant in NYS and she said you can really make a living now off of grants. She was flabbergasted when I said no, my mom & stepfather do it for free. They spend most of their time in hospitals cheering up the down and out. The grant money is a nice thing that enabled them to cover expenses for a specific large project, plus a combination of paid & volunteer labor.
Remember after the hurricanes down here in Broward and Palm Beach- the federal government 2 years later was paying for clowns to ‘help with psychological” issues of ‘getting over it’. The clowns admittedly had trouble finding anyone who actually had problems so they were basically requesting anyone who would listen to let them come to their facility. After the Sun Sentinel exposed the sham, the government funded clowns were finally sent back home (yes, we paid to bring them in from out of state)
Am I against the clowns? Of course not. I know from my mother all the hard work they do in training, preparation and hours of entertaining in tough situations. I got the feeling though that there is something more than just meeting ‘an urgent need’ being fulfilled in South Florida. And what does the government pay clowns for their efforts anyway?
I didn’t find specific Florida grant in google, but here’s another link:
Homeland security funds for clowns–