Grantees

River Arts is a non-profit community arts center located in Morrisville, Vermont, with a mission of enriching and empowering the community through the arts. River Arts will use this funding to purchase printmaking materials for our new classroom. These materials will enable us to offer more expressive opportunities for our youth through additional after school programming, kinderarts classes and our new youth healing arts programming. We believe that the artistic process is inherently therapeutic and educational, it presents opportunities for self-reflection and growth; it cultivates social emotional awareness, peer camaraderie and opportunities to become more empowered, resilient, and compassionate individuals.

The Riverside Middle School "Not Summer School" program is an enrichment program offered to low socioeconomic status students with limited summer opportunities. Throughout the summer Riversides "Not Summer School" program provides a 4-week enrichment program for students going into 6th-8th grade. Additionally, the students we enroll have missed upwards of 30 days of school and can immensely benefit from a summer enrichment program. We call this program “Not Summer School” because our kids associate summer school with hours of endless math and reading while trapped inside on a beautiful day. “Not Summer School” focuses on learning “in real life”. We focus on skills needed every day, and we focus on fun.

Robin's Nest Children's Center is a high-quality, non-profit, early education program in the Old North End (ONE) of Burlington. Established in 1985, the Center has demonstrated a commitment to equity and diversity by routinely enrolling families from the refugee and new American population. We plan to improve our program's ability to serve New American families; families who face complex societal and economic challenges with a direct impact on youth. Specifically, we seek to improve social connection, offer interpreters where language barriers exist and support parental resilience. We'd also like to build the cultural competency skills of our staff to promote connection and offer strengths-based guidance.

Roots & Wings aims to be the staple program of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Vergennes. The primary pillars of the Roots & Wings program are community outreach, character development and good citizenship. Elementary students will work towards becoming Peer Leaders, middle school students towards Club Leaders, and high school students towards Community Leaders. As a member progresses through each stage, new opportunities become available and additional requirements are added. Pillars will offer increased opportunities for recognition, achievement, and community visibility that will foster stronger, more engaged citizens. We will build strong Roots here in the community so that youth will develop the Wings needed to support great futures.

Provide a three week summer progrma for 24 girls enering the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades as an introduction to non-traditional careers for women with opportunities to develop self-confidence and academic success through experiential learning, writing and leadership development

Rosie's Girls is a program for adolescent girls, designed to build self-esteem, perseverance and leadership through learning and applying basic skills in carpentry and other skilled trades. Girls are challenged to develop a broaader sense of themselves and their capabilities, learn independence and self-reliance, and expand thier skills.

Rosie's Girls is a unique trades exploration camp for girls entering 6th to 8th grades. They focus on attracting an economically, racially and ethnically diverse pool of participants. Through learning and applying basic skills in carpentry and other technical trades, girls are challenged to explore nontradional career interests, develop new areas of physical confidence, and expand their math and science skills thorugh concrete applications.

A summer trades program for middle school girls