2011 Grant Partners
Wize Girlz
YWCA of Blackhawk County
Wize Girlz is an after-school program for middle-school girls in Waterloo, which will provide a stable environment for girls to explore and discuss issues such as personal health, racism, violence prevention, leadership, education and employment. Various groups will meet once a week for the entire school year and will engage in a variety of activities, such as service projects, going on interactive field trips and speaker presentations. Wize Girlz aims to build self esteem and life skills while also increasing female graduation rates.
Location/Service Area: Blackhawk County, IA Amount: $4,775
Mid-Year Highlights: During the summer months, participants are joined together for activities twice weekly. Due to the extensive waiting list this summer, two additional groups were offered resulting in 466 contacts with 84 girls. A variety of topics were covered including alcohol/drug prevention, healthy relationships, nutrition, avoiding risky behaviors and other topics of interest. Participants engaged in a variety of activities, including Money Smart Week activities, making tie-dye shirts, going on museum field trips, planting/caring for community gardens, bowling, and completing service projects at the local food bank.
The young women met program objectives as follows:
-100% of participants who completed the evaluations reported increased knowledge about volunteering/citizenship.
--86% of participants completing evaluations reported increased knowledge on health, prevention and interpersonal topics.
-77% of Wize Girlz participants did not have a major infraction of conduct requirements as set forth by the Waterloo School System.
Evaluation results and direct comments from the participants and their parents/guardians lead the program staff to believe that the program has a strong, positive influence on the lives of the participants and that the experiences will have long-term, positive impacts.
The program experienced increased registrations for the summer session. Fortunately, they were able to find the staffing, transportation and funding necessary to meet programming needs. YWCA plans to seek funding to sustain the program and make it available to girls in the Cedar Valley area who might benefit from participation.
Year-End Highlights: Wize Girlz groups from four different middle schools have come together and accomplished many goals during their 100 meetings throughout the year. The girls participated in a wide array of activities which have taught them skills on how to be successful in the future. They discussed, among other topics, alcohol and drug prevention, nutrition, peer pressure, and healthy relationships.
The girls also went on multiple field trips to museums, the Waterloo Fire and Rescue station, and the University of Northern Iowa, where they built and raced solar cars. In addition, Wize Girlz participated in a number of service learning activities, including working at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank, sending cards to deployed soldiers, and planting community gardens at a neighborhood center. For a larger project, the girls sent gifts to Toys for Tots with the money they had raised from selling crafts. In addition, the girls visited residents at the Country View Long-term Care Center, and the visit went so well that the facility invited the Wize Girlz to attend their Christmas party.
Organizers for Wize Girlz hope that the girls will use what they have learned to make a positive impact not only on their lives, but also on their families and communities. “By providing participants with a safe, caring environment to learn and experience new ideas and opportunities, we empower these young women to value themselves for their many strengths: their strong bodies, their intelligence, their emotional sensibility, their ability to make sound, informed choices and decisions, and their appreciation of others. This empowerment enables them to be advocates for themselves and for other girls and women.”
Leadership Development Programming for Columbus Junction
Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois
Roundy Elementary School girls will participate in engaging and empowering activities while creating a community service project that focuses on environmental sustainability. At the same time, the girls will finish a Girl Scouts Journey series and work with a college-aged mentor who will help them with their project. Throughout the experience, the girls will take photographs or video of their activities and use social media to share the content with girls across the country. At the project’s end the girls will have a stronger sense of leadership, community involvement and career opportunities.
Location/Service Area: Louisa County, IA
Amount: $5,225
Mid-Year Highlights: Because many families in Columbus Junction are struggling to make ends meet and often work multiple jobs at different hours, few parents were available to serve as volunteers, let alone leaders or co-leaders for a traditional troop. The after school program is held at school (eliminating the need for additional transportation to meetings) and is staff driven, so its nontraditional approach overcomes significant barriers to partipation among girls in this community.
Many of this group’s project activities have been based in It’s Your Planet, Love It!, a national Girl Scout program with an environmental theme. The Columbus Junction girls learned about energy use and conservation as well as recycling. The girls decided to undertake a three-month recycling service project. While their original intention was to establish a recycling program in their school, they ran into resistance from the community’s waste commission. The project leaders noted that this challenge provided the girls with firsthand experience with adversity and working around obstacles to accomplish their goals through problem solving. They decided to make recycling bins and take them home for their families to use. In late spring, they held a family dinner during which the girls talked about energy saving light bulbs and showcased what they had accomplished during the year.
Funding from IWF has been used to support staff time, program supplies, books and awards for the girls, and transportation. It also covered the girls’ $12 annual participant fee so families did not have to absorb an additional financial burden.
Angel House
This facility will help homeless, substance addicted women transition into substance-free, independent living. Angel House will provide the most comprehensive assistance available to women in recovery in the area. The program offers multiple services to help the women fully recover from substance abuse. These include recovery meetings, job-seeking assistance and classes focusing on financial management, healthy relationships, and nutrition. Once they complete the program, the women will not only have the skills to lead a responsible, productive life; they will also be able to demonstrate their abilities to women in similar situations.
Location/Service Area: Blackhawk County, IA
Amount: $5,000
Mid-Year Highlights: Since Angel House filed its grant application with IWF, 32 women have lived in the house, and four women have successfully completed the program. Of those four women, three are employed, and one is also attending college. In addition to serving women who are living at the house, recovering addicts from the community who may not have qualified to live in the house can attend meetings or simply spend time at Angel House if they need a safe place to stay during the day.
The staff at Angel House place a large emphasis on developing leadership qualities in their residents. To do this, they hold individual sessions with each resident and a self-esteem class. They also appoint a Senior Peer, who leads conflict resolution among residents and helps new residents adjust to living in Angel House.
Angel House staff highlighted one graduate in particular who has continued to utilize the skills she learned at the house. “Carol” resided at the house from April to November 2010, and in that time she learned coping skills for her past experiences and how to help others. Since leaving the program, Carol has retained the job she started while living at Angel House, celebrated a year of sobriety in June and has become a sponser in a local 12-step program.
Angel House has used part of the $2,500 it has received so far from IWF to provide transportation for residents. Ladies who do not have a car or a driver’s license are provided transportation to acquire/keep employment and attend 12-step meetings. Angel House has also used their funding to provide self-esteem classes and individual sessions to their residents.
Although Angel House is a new program, staff have said that they have already seen an impact on individuals and the community: “On an individual basis, we are told by our residents how grateful they are that Angel House is in our community. It provides for them safe housing with learning opportunities that was not possible prior to the opening of Angel House. Nearly all of our referral sources have also shared their appreciation for Angel House. This comes overwhelmingly from Department of Corrections’ personnel who realize our atmosphere is a much better alternative for many of their female clients.”
Year-End Highlights: Angel House has grown rapidly in the past two years, serving 54 women since July 2010, with 10 current residents and a full waiting list. Of the women to go through the house, 9 have graduated, working steady jobs and residing in their own homes. The House has developed three complementary programs on financial self-sufficiency, health improvement, and fostering positive relationships in order to help its ladies gain their own footing. As they successfully move through the program, directors say the women build self-esteem and feelings of self-reliance. In this way, they develop the confidence to deal with underlying causes of their addictions, forgive themselves and others, and make positive steps for the future, such as working toward regaining custody of their children.
While learning financial literacy and finding employment, the ladies create bi-weekly budgets and get in the habit of paying bills on time. They also set up a personal savings account and have the chance to pay off old debts. Even if women have left the program prematurely, they still have skills to help them reach financial independence. Some of these women are now living in independent housing and have regained custody of their children.
Residents and directors know that missteps can happen, and that recovery means much more than simply not using drugs or alcohol. When residents start to revert to old, negative behaviors, members of the House help the woman start over and get back on track. House directors identified one particular resident who was backsliding for a few months until she was almost asked to leave the program. However, the other residents and directors spoke with her as a group, and she became aware of her behavior and its impact on others. In the past few weeks, she has made big changes, creating more positive friendships, looking for employment, working around Angel House to help pay her bill, and trying to find an attorney in order to reestablish contact with her daughter. Directors say that although it will take time to get back to where she was, this woman has the perspective and experience that will allow her to be a good mentor to newer residents.
By working with the community, Angel House has been able to educate others on the causes and results of addiction, in order to show that it is not a moral deficiency but a disease that can be overcome. They hope to continue community outreach efforts and develop another component of their financial self-sufficiency program. This would involve working with other non-profits and local employers to help their residents find work. Directors also say that they would like to offer their services to more women throughout the region or state, and they hope to open a facility similar to Angel House within the next five years.
HEAT Force (Housing and Economic Advocacy Taskforce)
Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence
The HEAT Force combines the efforts of both service-providing and policy-research nonprofits in order to give low-income women and domestic abuse survivors more financial opportunities. It will also give these women and domestic violence advocates the skills they need to influence local and federal policies regarding housing and economic assistance. The HEAT Force will hold webinars that will give advocates better knowledge of things like affordable housing, welfare and public speaking. It will also provide women and girls with classes on how to recognize and avoid financial abuse and manage money responsibly.
Location/Service Area: Statewide
Amount: $5,000
Mid-Year Highlights: Thanks to the IWF grant, HEAT (Housing and Economic Advocacy Taskforce) has increased its membership to nearly all the DV programs statewide – 28 members. They have had 2 conference calls, 4 meetings and the first ever state-wide conference was held on Sept. 19, 2011. Leadership and social change are seen in new ways of addressing shelter and advocacy. They are gaining expertise in housing and economic advocacy. One advocate is now on the Governor’s Iowa Council on Homelessness. Another has introduced classes in financial literacy in her program. In joining forces, these advocates can learn about resources, especially financial literacy funding sources, and see themselves as “experts.” In fact, the chief impact so far is that the HEAT participants are “beginning to see themselves as leaders and agents of change.” By uniting domestic violence leaders, HEAT is reframing the issue of domestic violence and homelessness.
Year-End Highlights: In its application, the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence stated that the HEAT Force would “focus on gaps in the social safety net around housing and economic justice that traditionally disadvantage women.” A year into the program, members of HEAT Force say that while these gaps still exist, they have helped draw attention to them, which is a step toward eliminating them altogether.
Throughout the year HEAT Force held training sessions, webinars, and held its first annual conference in September. The training sessions took place across the state, teaching financial literacy to domestic abuse survivors. So far, over 200 women have taken financial education classes. HEAT has also been able to expand in terms of both membership and focus. The organization now has 31 active members, who have begun to discuss becoming more political involved and forming greater connections with other social justice and anti-poverty non-profits. At the conference, after learning about affordable housing, one member pledged to run for a form of political office.
What is most striking about this organization is its emphasis on expansion and their ambitious future goals. Members of the HEAT Force say they are proud of their current accomplishments, but they have much more to do in their effort to prevent economic abuse against domestic abuse survivors and help them attain self-sufficiency: “In 2011 we measured our successes in members, trainings and meetings. In future years we hope to measure our successes by the number of advocacy calls, meetings with elected officials, the number of HEAT force members elected to office, and by the progressive antipoverty legislation that we help pass.”