Grantees

TogetherWorks' Open0-Mic program is a healthy choice for a weekly structured youth activity. This grant will allow us to purchase the appropriate equipment for this program.

The Puppets in Education program needs to update the puppet presentation and workshop set up, as per evaluation feedback from teachers, to have the most effective social emotional presentations for VT's children. Our stage is over 15 years old and is held together with duct tape. We have been using donated items for the workshop and it is not as successful as we would like it to be. We are in need of a new stage, rear projector and screen. Our programs have the most impact when children lose themselves in the story and world the puppets create. Having faulty equipment can break the powerful connection with the children and then the important messages the puppets are teaching are lost. New equipment will let us focus on the programming.

Vermont Family Network (VFN) empowers and supports all Vermont families of children with special needs. Puppets in Education (PiE) was a stand-alone nonprofit until 2017, when it merged with VFN. Utilizing life-sized puppets, PiE teaches children how to keep themselves safe and healthy and to appreciate each other’s differences through educational programs for pre-K–8 students and their adults. Our programs model effective leadership and problem-solving skills and demonstrate respect and inclusion in a diverse community. For over 38 years, PiE has reached 10,000 children a year in schools throughout VT, promoting empathy and kindness for all while educating students in strategies to break the cycles of abuse, bullying, and harassment.

Vermont Family Network (VFN) empowers and supports all Vermont families of children with special needs. Puppets in Education (PiE) was a stand-alone nonprofit until 2017, when it merged with VFN. Using life-sized puppets, PiE teaches children how to keep themselves safe and healthy and to appreciate each other’s differences through educational programs for pre-K–8 students and their adults. Our programs model effective leadership and problem-solving skills and demonstrate respect and inclusion in all communities. For over 40 years, PiE has reached 10,000 children annually in Vermont schools. We promote empathy and kindness while educating students about strategies that break the cycles of abuse, bullying and harassment.

Assistance to help the parent child center to spend the time in order to become NAEYC accreditated and become a STAR recognized center through the State of Vermont.

Over the past three years we have established an active bicycle program based out of Putney Central School. This program includes housing a fleet of bikes for our students to use during school and and summer programming, a shed to store them, and tools for our students to learn the skills to maintain this fleet. The funds requested in this application would go towards purchasing materials to construct elements of a community bike park on our campus. The materials purchased would include wood (approx. $1500) and hardware (approx. $500). The features designed and build include jumps, banked curves, drop in ramps, rollers, etc. These features would be an exciting addition to the existing infrastructure of bike program, and would be available for youth to use during school hours, as well as outside of school time during the evenings, weekends and throughout school breaks.

Building a Positive Community (BAPC) supports the greater Brattleboro community (including the towns served by the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union school district. We are becoming certified as a Quality Youth Development community. The Quality Youth Development or “QYD” is a community certification process that will demonstrate the greater Brattleboro community is actively promoting youth engagement and youth empowerment. The Coalition will convene youth and adults representing a cross-section of our community to work toward meeting at least 7 of the 10 possible benchmarks identified by Essex CHIPS in Essex, VT (the host of the certification process) to qualify as a QYD community.

We would like to enrich our fruit trees and harvest curriculum by purchasing equipment for annual use by our students. This includes an apple broom, a picking ladder, and most importantly, a cider press. These purchases will become a regular component of our traditional autumn harvest curriculum. We have several apple trees as well as pear trees in our playyard that we care for and harvest annually. Children and teachers watch and notice the development of the fruit from blossom to harvest, and then prepare foods to eat and store. We feel that celebrating our connection to locally grown food is of the utmost importance for the health of our bodies and the health of our communities and is a natural fit in our program.