Grantees

This program will expand upon their existing offerings to give teens an opportunity to advocate for themselves & make choices about their futures.

Capstone Community Action Head Start runs the only state-approved education program for pregnant and parenting teens in Washington County. Our program, The Family Literacy Center, is located at the Brook Street School, in downtown Barre. Here, young parents complete their high school diploma while accessing parenting education, counseling and life skills supports. Children are cared for at Head Start’s NAEYC accredited on-site early childhood development center. Our young parents, ranging in age from 14-21, face many barriers in life that inhibit their ability to be the best possible teachers in their children’s lives. Most have not had the benefit of positive parenting and have experienced trauma and neglect.

The purpose of this grant is to fund a mentoring & evaluation project that supports early care and education providers to implement a child sexual abuse prevention program “Care for Kids”. The "Care for Kids" Program trains educators and parents and has a classroom curriculum for children in preschool, kindergarten and grades 1-2.

With this funding, The Mentor Connector will develop a train-the-trainer career development model within the organization to orient and assist 35 mentor matches to implement career awareness and exploration tools and resources within the mentoring experience.

We are requesting funding to support the purchase of classroom furniture to replace items that are aged and/or have become broken and require replacement. We offer preschool to 30 students in two classrooms at Twinfield Union School in Plainfield, VT and have limited local funding for these more expensive purchases. We are hoping not to have to spend our finite classroom budget for expendable supplies and save those funds for supplies that need to be replaced annually.

Funds used to help teens attend the Teen Institute.

For 30 years Chandler Center for the Arts has served the families of Central Vermont with an exceptional theater arts program. Each summer for several weeks between 60 to 150 kids participate in a powerful, collective experience creating a complete staged musical production, which helps them to form strong social connections, while also allowing them to achieve their full potential. Each year during these weeks of rehearsal, and during four public performances clustered around the 4th of July, children and teens learn to rely on each other, while testing their own abilities. While they also receiving supportive mentoring from the adults managing the show: the Director, Musical Director, Choreographer, Tech Director, Costumer, and volunteers

Changing Perspectives engages students in open dialogue and real world experiences in an effort to promote disability awareness and foster inclusive communities. We provide schools with disability awareness programing; through a combination of curriculum development and teacher trainings. We serve students and teachers in elementary and middle schools throughout Vermont and New Hampshire. With roughly 15% of Vermont students labeled with a disability, our schools are asked to meet the needs of an ever more diverse population. To promote awareness and empathy amongst students we must provide teachers with proactive solutions to address disability awareness.