Women's Leadership Council 2011-12 Funded Programs
The Women’s Leadership Council elected to award $17,500 in grant funding for the 2011-12 funding cycle to two programs that promote financial stability and self-sufficiency for women in Thurston County. For the second year, The Sewing Cooperative, a program of CIELO, was awarded a WLC grant. This year they will be receiving $10,000. The other grant, in the amount of $7,500, was awarded to the Thriving Families Community Cafes, a program of the Family Support Center of South Sound. Congratulations to our new grant recipients!
CIELO’s The Sewing Cooperative will provide each participant with a kit of sewing tools. Funds will also be used to purchase material, notions, and other sewing supplies and a serging machine. A bi-lingual Project Coordinator will be present during all classes and will also work with the Northwest Cooperative Development Center to coordinate all field trips, be responsible for securing the community sites where students will sell their goods, coordinate the small business development training with Enterprise for Equity, determine what advertising needs to be carried out, coordinate with CIELO's Volunteer Coordinator to find the appropriate person to teach the ESL classes and help with the intake of customer orders. The bi-lingual instructor will develop the curriculum, teach the course, and work in concert with the Project Coordinator to meet the objectives of the program. A volunteer child care provider will be on site to take care of the children while their mothers are in class.
Do you want to volunteer with The Sewing Project or do you have sewing supplies to donate? Click here to view CIELO's "Wish List" and contact Denise Lynch at cieloproject@comcast.net if you can help.
The Family Support Center's Thriving Families Community Cafes will hold four café conversations in each of three geographically distributed sites for a total of twelve separate Thurston County conversations. The focus will be on meeting the basic needs of the participants through the lens of the Strengthening Families Protective Factors framework (developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy/CSSP). This research-based study has shown that healthy, self-sufficient families result when these five Protective Factors are in place: (1) Parental Resilience, (2) Social connections, (3) Knowledge of parenting and child development, (4) Concrete support in times of need, and (5) Social and emotional competence of children. A Time Bank program will be included in the conversations, focusing on non-monetary mutual assistance. The project’s goal is to improve each participant’s capacity for financial stability and self-sufficiency by emphasizing Factors (2) Social connections (mutual assistance) and (4) Concrete support (basic needs) in times of need. The project’s proposed outcome for participant families is to enroll in the Time Bank and identify and connect with a new community resource.
For more information about WLC grants, contact Stephanie Blumhagen, Grants and Financial Stability Manager at 360.943.2773 x 11 or sblumhagen@unitedway-thurston.org.
|
