Funded Partners

COMMUNITY GRANT AWARDS FOR 2012:

Financial Stability:

  • ReSOURCE
    Project: Workforce Development Project

    ReSOURCE's workforce training programs combine occupational skills training with academic learning and participants earn industry-recognized credentials. ReSOURCE has identified specific areas of workforce development and training activities to provide job skills, education, and on-the-job experience for low-income individuals and at-risk youth. The programs are designed to give students a broad set of skills and more specialized training in specific areas of interest, and place them in employment in fields where growth is possible and wages are livable, thus increasing their opportunities for economic advancement.

  • Central Vermont Community Action Council
    Project: Volunteer Income Tax Assistance

    Since the mid-1990s, Central Vermont Community Action Council has partnered with the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program to provide a high-quality tax preparation choice for low income families (<=$49,000) to make sure Vermonters claim all refunds and credits due. Special effort is made to reach elder communities, those with disabilities, and taxpayers who speak English as a second language. Last year, our highly efficient well-run tax assistance program helped 1,300 Vermonters in 910 households and 56 towns, claiming over $1.3 million in tax refunds. CVCAC offers in-person assistance at no cost to prepare and file federal and state income taxes at multiple locations and onsite at local employers.

  • Safeline
    Project: I Can

    Safeline's "I Can" program increases the number of financially stable families in our community by annually supplying at least 250 victims and survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking in Orange County and northern Windsor County, with the tools, resources and support vital to improving their financial security and overall wellbeing. To achieve this end, Safeline's Economic Justice and Housing Advocate (EJHA) provides emotional support, housing advocacy, life skills training, continuing education support and/or job readiness support, transportation and resources/referrals to program participants. In addition, the "I Can" project involves a community outreach/systems change component. The EJHA works with project partners to increase community awareness about the issue of financial abuse and improve communication between organizations responding to the needs of victims and survivors.

Healthy Living:

  • Food Works at Two Rivers Center
    Project: Growing Hope

    This multi-year initiative combines programs in gardening, food preservation, cooking and nutrition education at two of the largest subsidized housing sites in Barre together with Barre City Elementary and Middle School (BCEMS). Begun in 2006 at Highgate Housing and Green Acres Housing, this work utilizes community organizing to build food systems both in low-income areas and for the whole community, including catalyzing collaborations, expanding access and training for community gardens, root cellars, food preservation, and cooking. These hands-on activities cultivate healthy personal habits for good eating, fitness, and nutrition.

  • Vermont Farm to School
    Project: Sprouts After-School Garden Program

    Green Mountain Farm-to-School (GMFTS) coordinates a Sprouts After-School Garden Program at 18 schools with low-income populations in Orleans and Essex Counties. Sprouts is a year-round, after-school program for grades 2-8 that promotes healthy lifestyle choices through hands-on gardening and cooking activities. The program works with students to grow food for the school cafeteria, ensuring that every student, regardless of his or her socioeconomic group, has access to fresh, nutritious foods. In addition, through hands-on, inquiry-based gardening and cooking activities, we seek to increase students' exposure to fresh, nutritious foods, recognizing that when students have participated in growing, harvesting and preparing foods they are more likely to try new foods and make healthy food choices. During the 2011-2012 academic year, we will design and plant 18 school gardens to provide fresh, nutritious food to over 2,300 students and teach a comprehensive nutrition and agriculture curriculum, consisting of 30 standardized workshops to over 720 students at 18 schools in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Early Learning:

  • Prevent Child Abuse Vermont
    Project: Building Communities that Nurture Children's Social/Emotional Readiness for School

    This project will continue to target parents and caregivers of young children and young children in Barre City, Essex Caledonia Supervisory Union, Washington South Supervisory Union, Orange North Supervisory Union, and Orleans Central Supervisory Union. Using Prevent Child Abuse Vermont's (PCAV) prevention programs, the Care for Kids curriculum and the Nurturing Healthy Sexual Development (NHSD) training workshop, parents and caregivers will learn of the importance of early learning, support early learning and play an active role in preparing children for school. Care for Kids and NHSD help children: appropriately express emotions, interact positively with other children and adults, follow simple rules, pay attention, engage in conversation, know how and when to ask adults for help, be curious, show awareness of how books are organized and used, and engage in imaginative play - all indicators used in the Ready Kindergartner Questionnaire.

  • Good Beginnings of Central VT
    Project: Mother/Infant Free Home Visitation Program

    Good Beginnings of Central Vermont is a free home visitor, primary prevention program that relies solely on trained volunteers to offer unconditional support and education to any family who is expecting or has a newborn birth or adopted infant. Each year Good Beginnings serves over one hundred families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds throughout 21 central Vermont towns, identifying immediate needs such as hunger, housing, and emergency needs, and addressing them. Through creative collaborations with hospital birthing centers, home birth midwives, and other maternal wellness providers, they respond to referrals and reach out to those families in need. Ongoing weekly visits (for up to 3 months) encourage a relationship in which the family can appeal to the volunteer for education, information, varied support services, and advocacy. Volunteers are attuned to the symptoms and signs of a range of postpartum mood disorders, and address them - as well as reach out to encourage families in their initiatives of bonding, literacy, and fatherhood nurturing during their three-month visits. By providing volunteers to support new parents with home visits during the critical weeks following birth, they are helping to build healthy families and neighborhoods.