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The Art of Yoga has been in existence for 9 years as an organization that is focused and founded upon the idea of women helping women. It has grown from its original site at a small school in East Palo Alto to multiple sites from San Francisco to San Jose, annually treating over 500 adolescent females who are currently in the juvenile detention system for rehabilitation and intervention. This program is fully endorsed and mandated by the courts as a form of rehabilitation for juvenile female offenders. The staff works together with a team comprised of probation officers, psychologists and classroom teachers, all of whom are detention center staff and support personnel for the healing and rehabilitation. The program aims to use yoga not only as an exercise for the physical body, but as a form of mental and emotional nurturing as well.
Your support will help The Art of Yoga inspire local teenage girls to awaken their self-awareness, cultivate self-respect, and practice the self-control necessary for change. Everyday girls show the success of this gender-responsive intervention. In their own words:
The 100 WCF Grant Committee chose The Art of Yoga’s Yoga and Creative Arts Curriculum as one of our 2012 Finalists because we are in agreement with their mission statement, which is to provide a structured framework and holistic continuum of care for incarcerated girls, and to guide them away from a lifelong cycle of crime and incarceration.
A grant from 100 Women would allow the program to provide specially trained yoga teachers and art therapists to work with the girls at the detention centers, which would enable the Art of Yoga to further promote pro-social behavior, empathy, positive relationships and accountability to self, others and community.
For more information on Family & Children’s Services please refer to their website: www.theartofyogaproject.org
The Mountain View RotaCare Free Medical Clinic has been the primary Free Clinic for the working poor in Northern Santa Clara County for 15 years, comprised of over 300 volunteers- of which 110 are Health Care professionals. The clinic allows the working poor to receive the medical attention that they need and deserve, but that they would otherwise not be able to afford. To date, the clinic provides approximately 16,000 free services to about 2,700 uninsured patients annually. These services range from general medicine and prevention to specialty services like psychology counseling and cardiology. The clinic also partners with other local agencies and foundations in order to provide and make accessible the resources needed by patients to maintain their positive health.
Community need drives the plan to expand Fast Track. Most RotaCare patients are struggling to survive at the most basic level: securing food and shelter. The medical costs and lost wages from a single illness could tip the balance such that they end up hungry and homeless. (Catastrophic healthcare costs are a primary cause for bankruptcies.) RotaCare meets this critical need by providing compassionate, respectful healthcare with no barriers to access.
The 100 WCF Grant Committee chose RotaCare’s Fast Track Program as one of our 2012 Finalists because we are in agreement with their mission statement, which is to provide urgent care needs early on to prevent future complications for the working poor. The committee believes that funding this volunteer-based program would greatly assist in the clinic’s ability to continue to provide essential health services to the working poor. Furthermore, it would enable the clinic to expand and enhance its services while maintaining the quality and excellence in its practices.
A grant from 100 Women would fund health care services for both acute care and urgent needs for an additional 528 low- income patients. It would enable RotaCare to greatly expand and enhance their services, maintaining focus on the goal of getting the patients back to work as soon as possible. The implementation of this project means hundreds of people will be treated more quickly and will be able to return to their daily lives.
For more information on RotaCare please refer to their website: www.elcaminohospital.org/Programs_and_Services/Community_Health_Services/RotaCare_Free_Clinic
AchieveKids provides special education and mental health services to children, ages 5 -22, who suffer from emotional and/or developmental disabilities. These include the autism spectrum disorders, disruptive behavior, anxiety disorders, mood disorders and psychotic disorders that can’t otherwise be addressed in traditional academic settings. One of their new services, AKPlus @Home, is a behavior services program designed to support families at home while simultaneously providing consistency between school and home environments for the child. It is a 12- to 14- week program run by a behavior specialist that includes classroom and in-home observation, joint priority setting with parents and teachers, and 6 to 8 weekly in-home training sessions. It provides a profound opportunity to strengthen pathways to success for these children. As the family home becomes more stable, predictable, and rewarding, the students will achieve greater success in situations outside of school and their home environments.
AKPlus @Home is unique in the field because it creates a collaborative bridge between school and home. The education staff (a credentialed special education teacher with additional training as a behavior analyst) works with the family as a unit to teach principles and practices of behavior analysis so that families can become their own experts. AKPlus @Home is offered free of charge to the families. This program is research-based; collecting data from the first year of offering AKPlus @Home will insure that the program can be strengthened and replicated going forward.
The 100 WCF Grant Committee chose the AchieveKids AKPlus @Home project as our 2012 finalist because it satisfies a crucial need for families struggling with children who have major developmental, emotional and/or severe behavioral problems. Their intensive challenges often leave them feeling isolated and overwhelmed, impacting the child, the family, the teachers at school, and in some cases, the community.
Receiving a grant from 100 WCF will enable 17 - 20 families who have children attending AchieveKids to participate in the AKPlus @Home service. By improving the lives of these children and their families, we will also be positively impacting the community around them.
For more information on AchieveKids please refer to their website: www.achievekids.org
Founded in 1997, Sunday Friends serves adults and children of very low-income families in San Jose who are struggling to avoid homelessness or, oftentimes, are recovering from homelessness. By partaking in the program, families are given the opportunity to do community service and attend classes ranging from ESL, basic finance, health and parenting, in order to earn “tickets” to buy basic living essentials at the Sunday Friends on-site store. Adults and children alike are happy to engage and be involved in the classes and community service activities in order to provide for their families; even the younger children enjoy earning tickets while simultaneously learning a good work ethic in a community atmosphere. Sunday Friends is founded upon this notion of taking initiative and working hard, and aims to establish this mindset among its members in order to help them recover from difficult economic circumstances.
Sunday Friends provides a safe place where very low-income families come together with volunteers in a secular community setting. Children and their parents are provided opportunities to earn the things they need to promote self-reliance and a healthy, productive lifestyle. Through collaborative, carefully crafted activities, such as preparing healthy meals, writing letters to community supporters, making gifts for nursing home residents and cleaning the grounds, they give back to their community as they develop self-sufficiency. After 15 years of running programs in the South Bay, Sunday Friends is poised to expand to a second site during 2012 to reach more families in need.
The 100 WCF Grant Committee feels this program worthy of grant consideration because it really teaches the families how they can effectively give back to community, and it encourages people to take opportunities to earn what they need rather than simply rely on hand-outs. This is a very basic, but essential, first step to end the cycle of homelessness.
A grant from 100 Women would enable Sunday Friends to expand and open a second facility to further serve the community and expand their reach. Homelessness and poverty are issues prevalent to many parts of the Bay Area, and a grant would allow Sunday Friends to touch those beyond the local San Jose area.
For more information on Sunday Friends please refer to their website: sundayfriends.org
Firmly believing that young people have the right to learn from choices, Each One Reach One is dedicated to transforming youths placed in juvenile facilities into productive members of our local communities. Since its inception in 1998, EORO’s mentor-based educational programs have reached over 1800 youths in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties through a 14-week long program of critical personal and life skills classes. The classes provide the knowledge, tools and encouragement for young boys and girls to choose and make critical behavior changes both during incarceration as well as upon release. Program topics include HIV, safe sex, parenting, pregnancy prevention, gang intervention, employment, nutrition and substance abuse. For girls, the topics extend to include self esteem and body image. The program is offered at several high risk schools in both counties as well.
At least 50% of all new HIV infections are in youth under the age of 25 and statistically minority teenagers in the United States are at the highest risk for contracting STDS, HIV and AIDS. This is where EORO steps in with the Keeping it Safe (KIS) Program providing gender specific, culturally sensitive and effective health, life skills and pregnancy prevention programming for over 500 highly at risk boys and girls, 11 to 18 years of age incarcerated in five (5) detention facilities, and six (6) court and community high schools throughout the Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties.
The 100 WCF Grant Committee selected Each One Reach One as a finalist, because they recognize that changed behavior for these youths through these classes can positively change not only their own lives, but the lives of those in the communities around them. The Committee also recognizes that the youth often have not been exposed to this necessary personal knowledge due to negative or nonexistent family and community influences.
If Each One Reach One receives a grant from 100 Women, it will be utilized to educate over 500 boys and girls on critical life skills and personal health issues at the residential camps, juvenile detention facilities, and community schools in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Each One Reach One is in need of this funding in order to replace previous endorsement by the Juvenile Probation Department, which has been taken away due to government cutbacks.
For more information on Each One Reach One please refer to their website: www.eoro.org
Family & Children Services (founded in 1948) in collaboration with the County of Santa Clara and current and former foster youth, is developing the first-of-its-kind youth run, staff supported Foster Youth Community Center in Silicon Valley. The center – which has been named “the Hub” by the foster youth who are engaged in the planning- will promote the health and wellness of 500-600 Santa Clara County youth who are emerging, or have recently emerged, from the foster care system. The program was inspired by two successful centers in Napa and Sonoma Counties. An essential aspect is the staffing model: current and former foster youth will operate The Hub. Their goal is to create an innovative, sustainable and centralized way for youth to access the practical support and essential encouragement they need in a youth centered, youth-friendly environment, while increasing their connections with positive adult role models.
The potential benefits of The Hub for the long-term success and self-sufficiency of our foster youth are truly great—and will only grow as The Hub grows. The resources and one-to-one support to address daily living needs, such as food and housing and advancing their long-term goals, such as education and career planning, The Hub provides youth with leadership opportunities, positive peer support, and role models.
The 100 WCF Grant Committee has chosen The Hub as a 2012 finalist because this population really needs this type of dual support from peer emancipated foster youth. We admire that fact that this foundation was foster youth driven and managed, and is based on two highly successful programs in Napa and Sonoma counties. The youth we met with really struggled on their own to overcome the issues they faced, and are completely committed to helping peers work through the system in order to achieve their goals.
Receiving this grant will allow The Hub to serve at least 550 foster youth between the ages of 16-21, with additional outreach to 15-years-olds and those between 22 and 24. The Hub will provide easily accessible support to foster kids to help them meet their basic living needs; advance their education, employment and life goals; and enhance health and wellness services to best meet their needs.
For more information on Family & Children’s Services please refer to their website: www.fcservices.org
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