Program Awards

Community Impact:

2006 Program Awards

Teen Dating Violence:
Love Don’t Have to Hurt. In an effort to help teens establish and maintain healthy relationships, Planned Parenthood of Central Washington has developed a program that is unique because of its preventive nature. Teen Dating Violence: Love Doesn't Have to Hurt is a ten session program designed to facilitate hands-on kinesthetic activities that develop personal strengths and refusal skills for participants. The program will be offered through several community partners to deliver workshops to young people in the Tri-Cities area.

Don’t Quite Workshop
The Don't Quit Workshop is sponsored by the Resource Center at Columbia Basin College. This six week workshop series is for women going through a transition in their lives due to divorce, death of a spouse, abuse, loss of employment or other life issues. The workshop empowers women to make positive choices for change. Topics include self advocacy, debt reduction, learning styles, stress management, and employment services as well as college and community resources. Life can challenge us, but Don't Quit.

Project Backpack
The purpose of Project Backpack is to provide at-risk elementary children with nourishing food over the weekends to fill the gap when they do not have access to school meal programs. Every Friday, participants privately receive kid-friendly food pre-packed in containers that tuck easily into their backpacks to take home. This grant will allow Second Harvest to increase partner schools from five to eight, and to double the students served each week.

Spanish Literacy Project:
The Spanish Literacy Project is focused on childcare providers who speak Spanish but cannot read or write in Spanish. The program's goal is to improve the quality of child care available in the Franklin and Benton County area by offering literacy tools and at the same time broadening the child care skills of providers. Tutoring will be via the Plazas Comunitarias curriculum from the Mexican Consulate. A community coalition of agencies led by Washington State University Extension has designed this program.

Domestic Violence Awareness Project:
The Domestic Violence Awareness Project aims to serve victims of domestic violence in our community and to raise awareness of this issue. Through innovative outreach, isolated and underserved victims can be reached. This year-long project will be conducted by Domestic Violence Services of Benton and Franklin Counties.

2005 Program Awards

2004, WHWF-TC raised over $60,000 that went to 5 Programs:

Benton-Franklin County Health District:
The Access to Baby and Child Dentistry (ABCD) Program of Benton and Franklin Counties was developed in 1999 to address the tremendous oral health problems faced by toddlers and young children in Benton-Franklin Counties. ABCD targets children from infancy through age 6, providing early intervention and preventive strategies to improve oral health. It addresses the severe shortage of dental care for children of low income, Medicaid-eligible families by overcoming financial, transportation, cultural, language, literacy, or patient reliability barriers. The grant funds expansion of ABCD to remote areas.

Benton-Franklin Substance Abuse Council:
The “What’s a Life Worth…?” and “Drop Dead Gorgeous” Program is developing an interactive CD ROMs for teen girls. The program purpose is to change girls’ perceptions that “it won’t happen to me” when faced with drinking and drug use decisions. This program, supported by WSU, initially targets girls in southeastern Washington, but is ultimately intended for nationwide distribution.

Hope Home:
The Pregnant and Parenting Outreach Support Program provides educational and support groups to help end the cyclical effects of poverty, abuse and future teen pregnancies for teen-headed families. Over 96% of Hope Home’s clients are seeking help in finding and keeping jobs, 80% were victims of abuse and neglect, over 50% experienced domestic violence, and over 33% were sexually abused or assaulted. This program will help over 105 teens to gain support and education to change their lives.

Mid-Columbia Coalition for Children:
The Supervised Visitation and Exchange Services Program is a collaborative effort with community child and family advocacy stakeholders to support the over 500 children in our area that are experiencing domestic strife. The center will provide a safe site to children if there are potential physical or emotional concerns when seeing their non-custodial parent, allowing them an opportunity to develop positive relationships with their parents without the threat of abuse or neglect. Besides giving the children more frequent and safe, conflict-free access to both parents, it also educates families and empowers them to change habits and further cultivate their human potential.

Tri-Cities Chaplaincy:
Cork’s Place provides loving support for children and their families while learning to cope with the death of a loved one. Cork’s Place offers support groups and other methods to deal with grief in a specially-designed space that includes an art room, an activity room, a dramatic play area, and a volcano room, where powerful feelings and energy are released in a positive manner. For the first three months of 2004, 23 children sought assistance through the Chaplaincy – there is no other facility in the Tri-Cities specifically designed to serve children who are grieving a loss.

2003, WHWF-TC raised over $60,000 that went to 5 programs:

Boys and Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties:
SMART Girls (Skills, Mastery And Resistance Training) focuses on health, fitness, prevention/education and self-esteem enhancement for young girls (ages 8-16). Groups in several Tri-Cities locations had hands-on learning opportunities to develop healthy attitudes about themselves and their communities. They gained positive relationships through mentoring experiences, college and university visits, service projects and life skills and prevention curricula. Our area has very few programs that target the unique, and urgent, unmet needs of adolescent girls prior to the high school years.

Columbia Industries:
Youth Employment Services (YESS) fills the gap in available services for people with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 21 as they transition from school to the work world. Nine individuals received job placement, training and retention services . Four were successful in completing their goal of community employment. Three participants are receiving on-going services and one is completing an on-the-job training program. The WHWF-TC grant enabled these individuals to access employment services.

CONTACT:
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST). Three suicide intervention workshops were held for 50 trained caregivers in our community, and they are now fully equipped to recognize, respond to and refer people showing signs of suicide risk. Local educators, police officers, mental health professionals, clergy, crisis workers, students and suicide survivors now have a deeper understanding of the issues involved and are equipped with useful tools and resources. As a result, there is no doubt lives will be saved.

Consejo Amigas Unidas:
Community Organizing and Outreach Program provided domestic violence outreach to Latino women who live in isolated areas. New Amigas groups were formed to help women access community resources. Thirty families obtained legal protection. For example, a 35-year-old immigrant woman with three children whose closest neighbor was two miles away, stopped at a park where information about domestic violence was being distributed. She disclosed that her husband was sexually abusing both her and a daughter. She was immediately taken to a shelter and charges were pressed against the abuser. She now lives in subsidized housing and awaits her immigration application so she can get work. She has also learned how to drive and is providing peer-to- peer support to other domestic violence victims. She is thankful for the WHWF-TC funding, to reach out to isolated areas where women live in abusive situations with no knowledge of available assistance.

Lourdes Counseling Center:
Children’s Day Program allowed 24 youth with severe emotional and behavioral issues to develop skills that will deal with their problems and avoid trouble with others. Through a mural painting service project, participants reflected their views of the community while at the same time building self-esteem through art and a sense of connection to others. The cost per person was $47/day (the psychiatric inpatient unit is $1,186/day; juvenile detention time is $130/day). This program allowed children who have been unsuccessful in school, clubs and day camps to experience working as a group, participate in positive summer activities and develop skills to deal with life problems.

In 2002, WHWF-TC raised over $60,000 that went to 4 programs:

A.N.G.L.S. Network:
Expansion to KGH and Catholic Family & Child Services. A.N.G.L.S. Network provides car seats and information on infant and child auto safety to parents of newborns. This program funded expansion to KGH and to Catholic Family and Child Services and assured the safety of many newborns (and their older siblings) in the Tri-Cities communities. Many parents lack resources to buy car seats that meet current safety standards, so A.N.G.L.S. purchases the seats and related equipment and gives them to new parents, asking for a donation if possible, but not requiring repayment. By expanding their education services to pre-natal classes, they increase awareness of child auto safety and reduce the risk to the precious babies and young children in our area. The WHWF grant, along with funds raised through other means, provided a total of 305 car seats to our community, double from 2001, and expanded to Kadlec and Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery.

Tri-County Partners Habitat for Humanity:
WHW Build One House. Manivone Nopphavong has a lovely lavender (or is it lilac?) home on East 9th Place in Kennewick, thanks, in part, to WHWF-TC’s funds from the 2002 luncheon, and to the help of many women, men, and even a church youth group from our community. And, of course, in keeping with the HFH rules, Manivone had to participate in the construction, too. The home was dedicated in June, and now Manivone, a native of Laos, and her children have a beautiful place to live.

Second Harvest Food Bank:
Project Hand-Up. This program fills the gap for families where the head of household is moving up from public assistance, but it also covers the “working poor.” DSHS gives vouchers to the families that they bring to SHFB. They see over 90 family units each month and 150 during the winter holidays, with 60% of them single mothers. Typically, families make 3 to 4 visits before they’re on their feet. The Juvenile Justice Center work release program kids do inventory, load cars, and generally help out where they can; helping to support this program gives young men and women in the work release program a positive experience in helping others who need a “hand up.”

Sexual Assault Response Center:
Crisis Program: This program allowed SARC to hire a third advocate to aid victims of sexual assault. It allowed them to provide support groups for non-offending parents and caregivers and adult survivors of incest. It also allowed them to establish a girls empowerment group with the Boys and Girls clubs, and to provide more follow-up with clients. An interesting fact is that in many cases, victims are unwilling or unable to present themselves in legal proceedings, so the advocates assist them in preparing Victim Impact Statements for the court. Adding this third advocate allowed SARC to provide increased services to the many victims in our local communities. Between November 2002, and June 2003, SARC supported 209 new clients, 133 of whom were eighteen years of age or younger.

In 2001, WHWF-TC raised over $40,000 for two charities:

BF Community Action Committee:
Non-Traditional & Weekend Hours Child Care. This grant addressed the unmet need in the community for after-hours child care. It allowed 13 licensed child care providers to expand hours through the purchase of necessary tools like sleeping cots and computers to small things like toothbrushes and toothbrush holders to let the little ones “brush before going to bed.” Parents who work shifts now have appropriately-supplied caregivers for their young children.

Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery:
Mentoring to Overcome Barriers to Success. This grant allowed Safe Harbor Crisis Nursery to provide work/study students needed assistance to stay in school and complete courses. Because Safe Harbor is open 24/7/365, and also because work/study students are balancing work, childcare for their own children, and college, this mentoring program has helped several of their staff achieve success.