Grantees

Chandler Center for the Arts is continuing to grow its Youth Musical Summer Program. In its heyday, the program served over 100 students from all over Central Vermont, and we are growing back each year. This summer, rec programs are being cut, and there is a scarcity of childcare options in the area. Chandler fills a need by offering a full-day camp for three weeks during the summer to elementary and high school students. Theater programs and summer camps offer social and emotional benefits, as well as aid in developing skills such as teamwork, creativity, commitment, and literary engagement. They foster mentorship with role models and a sense of community belonging.

Parent support opportunity designed to develop social support, access to community resources and healthy parenting. Learning opportunity for teen parents to develop planning and social skills as they work along side adult mentors. They will plan and off

Sunrise Family Resource Center has been “Strengthening Families” in our community for over 50 years and is Bennington County’s only Parent Child Center. We recently opened a food Pantry for program participants to access free fresh, frozen, and nonperishable food items, clothing/shoes, toiletries, menstrual products, diapers/wipes, baby formula, household goods, and children’s toys/books. The equipment funded by this grant will allow us to expand our fresh/frozen food offerings, by doubling our refrigeration/freezer space in our Pantry. Since opening our Pantry in May 2021, our Pantry has been accessed over 260 times. Over the 2021 year, we worked with over 2,200 children, who have access to our Pantry.

Sunrise is a non-profit organization, one of 15 parent-child centers in the State of Vermont. We provide many services to families in the Bennington county. The ECE program provides priority care to student-parents in our Learning Together program as well as families that are getting services from Sunrise's other programs, and families that have DCF involvement. We are currently not fully staffed and have low child enrollment that is currently causing the Early Care and Education program to not have enough funds to get a new dishwasher.

To strengthen the partnership between the Howard Center and Burlington Children's Space for the purpose of providing more seamless support services for families and children.

Continue to develop the program and build on experiences and lessons learned in year one to provide new and expectant fathers in Central Vermont with the resources, support and education to create stable, nurturing family relationships and home environments durnig pregnancy and in the months following the birth or adoption of an infant.

Outright Vermont’s monthly Gender Creative Kids group (ages 5-12), Trans Group (ages 13-22), and Trans Parent Group provide safe, confidential spaces for peer and therapeutic support for children and youth whose gender expression doesn’t fit rigid “male” or “female” expectations. Some identify as transgender, others are in a process of developing the gender identity that fits for them, which may be called “gender creative,” “queer,” “nonconforming,” or “fluid.” In groups, youth and families get questions answered, build a supportive community, and develop the resilience and emotional competence needed to mitigate the significant physical, social, and emotional health risks gender non-conforming children and youth experience.

The Waterbury Public Library will support healthy social-emotional development in young children in our community. We will do this by: * Purchasing topical children's and parenting books to the library's collection * Adding pre-loaded educational tablets that focus on social-emotional learning tour lenging collection for the first time * Providing a keep-forever book to 235 +/- local children in preschool and Kindergarten. * Hosting 2 parenting/caregiver workshops on positive social-emotional development in young children