Grant Recipients since 2004

$78,000 awarded to North Carolina Dance Theatre for its Community Outreach Dance Program. Low-income children in Mecklenburg County have few opportunities to participate in a comprehensive community dance program. North Carolina Dance Theatre will provide free, accessible, high-quality dance instruction and performance opportunities, as well as access to professional dance performances, to 120 children in four geographically diverse low-income areas of the county. Parental involvement will be emphasized in all aspects of the program. Selection will be determined by audition, financial need, and commitment of the parents to the program. The program will provide transportation from local schools to the community centers.

$100,000 awarded to Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP): Charlotte for its Extended Academic Program. NC state exams indicate an entrenched academic achievement gap in Charlotte between African American and Caucasian students. KIPP: Charlotte is a public, college preparatory middle school focusing primarily on minority students from low-income families. KIPP: Charlotte currently serves 180 5th and 6th grade students. KIPP plans to add 7th grade and serve a total of 270 students in 2009-10. The program's extended school day from 7:30 am to 5:00 pm Monday-Friday, from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm on alternate Saturdays and a mandatory three week summer session program provide enrichment and remediation programs which are major factors to its success in closing the achievement gap.

$82,000 awarded to American Forests for its Urban Ecosystem Analysis project. Paving greenspace threatens to further degrade streams, diminish air quality and increase volumes of storm water. Utilizing satellite images, American Forests would create an ecosystem analysis that would compare the change in the land cover over time and result in an accurate, detailed image of our county's current tree canopy, rivers, streams and buffer areas. The data will be used 1) to determine the effectiveness of current ordinances; 2) to target areas for reforestation projects; 3) to identify "at risk" habitat locations for the park system to acquire and 4) to create models calculating required infrastructure costs due to tree removal and paving that can be used in future zoning decisions. American Forests will use the data to equip community leaders to make informed decisions about development and "smart" growth in our region.

$60,000 awarded to Community Health Services for its Physicians Reach Out program. More than 110,000 Mecklenburg County residents (15% of the population) are without health insurance. Physicians Reach Out (PRO), a network of more than 1,300 volunteer physicians, provides free care at the physicians' offices for those patients who are uninsured and fall below 200% of the Federal Poverty Level. PRO physicians provide both primary and specialty care. Demand is so great; PRO can currently serve only one in three eligible clients. This program will add a Physician Retention and Recruitment Specialist who will focus solely on maintaining current volunteer commitments and recruiting at least 25 new primary care physicians and 75 specialists to the PRO program.

$89,000 awarded to United Family Services for its Domestic Violence Legal Representation Project. Nationally, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence (DV). One of the greatest sources of increased homelessness, DV was identified by the 2008 UNCC Women's Summit as a top priority for our county. Of those cases that went to court locally, 40% were involuntarily dismissed, often due to victims' fear or confusion over their rights. In 2007, only 18% of DV victims had legal representation. The Legal Representation Project will enable legal representation for 60 DV clients in Y1 and 90 in Y2. Participants are screened to identify those that are not good candidates for Legal Services of Southern Piedmont or Legal Aid. Services include representation for restraining orders, but also separation, divorce, child custody and support.

2008 Grant Recipients
Sara Holderness, Chair
Sarah Shifflet, Incoming Chair

$70,000 awarded to Central Avenue Bilingual Preschool for its Art Program. Central Avenue Bilingual has been preparing at-risk and low-income Latino students for kindergarten since 1999. Central Avenue Bilingual Preschool provides a preschool education and family support for 96 students and their parents. To enhance quality programming for this group, the preschool is introducing art as a new program focus area. Given the critical need for its students to thrive in an English-based world, the preschool's art focus will promote language development, kindergarten readiness and enhanced parent-child interaction. Each year thousands of Latino children enter CMS for the first time, having never stepped into a classroom, heard a book read, or interacted with English-speaking children and adults.

$98,000 awarded to Seigle Avenue Partners, Inc for its Freedom School program. Freedom School is a free, six-week literacy-rich summer day camp for inner city children in kindergarten through 8th grade at risk of school failure. Research indicates that summer learning loss is the biggest factor in the achievement gap for low-income children, more significant than any differential in learning during the school year. Also, there is a critical lack of affordable summer care for children of working parents. Freedom School creates excitement about learning with an excellent curriculum tailored to the children. It broadens their horizons by providing field trips, art and music lessons. In the summer of 2008 Seigle Avenue Partners will serve 350 children at six Freedom School sites and seeks to expand this program.

$55,000 awarded to Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation for its Muddy Water Watch program. Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation will launch the Muddy Water Watch, a community-based measure to reduce sediment runoff, the leading water pollutant by volume in North Carolina. Muddy Water Watch will educate the community about the damage to our water quality from sediment runoff at poorly managed construction sites. Volunteers will identify and report sediment runoff at local construction sites. Reports will alert State and County regulators. Once notified, the regulators will enforce existing laws and offenders will be required to prevent destructive runoff. Muddy Water Watch will benefit everyone who drinks water or enjoys our lakes, streams and rivers.

$90,000 awarded to Shelter Health Services, Inc. for the Women and Children's Healthcare Initiative program. Shelter Heath Services is a level three accredited free clinic providing medical care and case management services to the homeless through volunteers and paid medical professionals. The Women and Children's Healthcare Initiative will enable Shelter Health Services to retain a full-time registered nurse to provide support to homeless women and children with chronic health conditions. The initiative initially targets three prevalent chronic conditions – hypertension, diabetes and asthma. Services will include doctor visits, labs, medications, education and assistance navigating the complex healthcare system. The Salvation Army has agreed to provide the space.

$98,475 awarded to A Child's Place for its Flex Social Work Team program. A Child's Place, the only local agency dedicated to advocating for homeless youth, will introduce the Flex Social Work Team, a new model to support multiple schools with triage, advocacy and weekly case management services reaching an additional 380 homeless children and their families per year. Last year, CMS identified 1,841 homeless students. With little stability, homeless children are twice as likely to fall behind and 36% will repeat a grade. A Child's Place works to erase the impact homelessness has on education. Last year, in partnership with CMS, A Child's Place had social work teams at eight high poverty schools and served 480 homeless children. However, it received requests for services from 73 additional schools.

Fifth Anniversary Celebration Grants

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Women's Impact Fund, one time awards of $2,250 were made to our 14 previous grant winners in appreciation of their work in our community.

2007 Grant Recipients
Anne Essaye, Chair
Sara Holderness, Incoming Chair

$49,000 awarded to Collaborative Arts for Shakespeare at The Green. In 2006, Collaborative Arts Theatre launched Shakespeare at The Green, a free, outdoor Shakespeare Festival. Hailed by The Charlotte Observer as "an earth-shaking cultural debut," the Shakespeare Festival attracted an audience of over 2,000 in its first year. Collaborative Arts Theatre plans to expand the Festival to two full-length Shakespeare plays and will offer free Shakespeare workshops for local students and a training program for student actors. Shakespeare at The Green addresses many levels of arts accessibility with a convenient Uptown site, free admission, professional-quality programs, and an exciting and easy to understand performance style.

$84,000 awarded to Teach For America for Eliminate Educational Inequity in Charlotte. Teach For America recruits talented college graduates to make a two-year commitment to teach low-income students in public schools. Their main focus is to combat the achievement gaps that persist in our education system. Teach For America is in its third year in Charlotte, with 115 teachers in 30 of Charlotte's high-poverty schools. These teachers impact the academic lives of over 10,000 students. Teach For America plans to grow to 150 teachers in the next two years. Results driven, Teach For America expects that 80% of its teachers in Charlotte will increase their students' academic performance by one to two grade levels in a school year.

$50,000 awarded to Carolinas Clean Air Coalition for Clear the Air for Kids! Charlotte's air quality is unhealthy for all residents, especially children. Breathing dirty air can limit a child's lung capacity by as much as 15% and is directly linked to asthma, lung infections, and stroke. The Clear the Air for Kids! project is an educational and advocacy campaign aimed at reducing children's exposure to dangerous school bus and car exhaust. Carolinas Clean Air Coalition is targeting 26 CMS elementary schools for educational programs about the impact of air pollution on children's health, and the urgent need to reduce bus and carpool line idling. These programs will reach 14,000 students, 2,000 staff and 21,000 parents. The Coalition also is working to ensure that all CMS school buses are retrofitted with pollution control devices by 2011.

$75,000 awarded To Charlotte Community Health Clinic for Chronic Disease/Health Education Project. Chronic diseases, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, can be permanently disabling without proper patient education and management. Charlotte Community Health Clinic (CCHC) wants to hire a Health Educator and R.N./Certified Diabetic Educator to educate low-income, uninsured residents on managing their chronic diseases. This vulnerable population is at greater risk of being hospitalized for preventable conditions. In 2002, the cost of avoidable hospitalizations in North Carolina was $1.5 billion. Currently, there is limited health education available for the uninsured in Charlotte. CCHC's health education project will fill this gap. It estimates that 3,000 patients will benefit from the project in the first year.

$86,000 awarded to YWCA Central Carolinas for Families Together. Families Together is a YWCA transitional housing program designed to help homeless families rebuild their lives. The program has two components: 1) affordable, transitional housing, and 2) comprehensive case management services. There is a critical need for transitional housing for homeless families in Charlotte; almost 45% of those in shelters are families with children. Families Together will provide transitional housing and support services at a new facility that has ten multi-family units. It anticipates that 85% of families participating for six months will remain in stable housing after one year. Families Together will serve approximately 100 women, children and families each year.

2006 Grant Recipients
Sandra, Conway, Chair
Anne Essaye, Incoming Chair

$88,000 awarded to Youth Homes. The Preparation for Independent Living program is dedicated to helping teens that have "aged out" of the foster care system, enter the workforce or continue their education, teaching teens the basic life skills necessary to maintain economic independence. This one-year grant, will allow Youth Homes to launch The Preparation for Independent Living program. This program will (1) teach life skills such as finding a job, food preparation, health maintenance, money management and use of public and private transportation (2) provide financial assistance for education and emergency financial needs (3) provide transitional housing and (4) most importantly, assign each foster youth to a social worker/mentor to provide a "family-style" connection, support and guidance.

$70,000 awarded to MedAssist Community Pharmacy. This nonprofit agency is the only licensed pharmacy serving the uninsured poor in our area and is positioned to become the sole county-wide free pharmacy. This one-year grant will enable MedAssist to hire an additional pharmacist and expand their services to include all seven free health clinics and all patients for Physicians Reach Out. MedAssist ultimately expects to serve over 12,000 patients per year within three years of expanding the program.

$65,000 awarded to Citizen Schools. This nonprofit agency mobilizes thousands of adult volunteers to help improve student achievement by teaching skill-building apprenticeships after-school. With the help of this one-year grant, Citizen Schools launched Charlotte sites at Eastway Middle School and Martin Luther King Middle School in August 2006, blending real-world learning projects with rigorous academic and leadership development activities, preparing students in the middle grades for success in high school, college, the workforce and civic life.

$40,000 awarded to Catawba Lands Conservancy. A partnership with The Trust for Public Land, the Carolina Regional Trail Initiative is a 500-mile ribbon of greenway through a 15-county region knitting together communities and preserving the land. The ultimate goal of the Trail is to build social capital and promote healthy, vibrant lifestyles, while expanding our region's economy. This one-year grant will fund an economic impact study that will catalyze the support of the local communities by showing how the trail system will be economically advantageous to the communities in our region.

2005 Grant Recipients
Toni Freeman, Chair
Sandra Conway, Incoming Chair

$84,000 awarded to the Ada Jenkins Center, whose mission is to improve the quality of life for residents through integrated delivery of health, education and human services. This one-year grant will allow the center to purchase a Mobile Community Dental Clinic that can visit community groups, public and nonprofit agencies, educational facilities, churches, nursing homes and others. There are no other dental clinics in the county that provide free or reduced cost dental care to adults on a regular basis.

$62,000 awarded to the Jacobs Ladder Job Center, whose mission is to help the unemployed find and keep living wage jobs. The Center's goal is to empower disadvantaged people with the tools necessary to achieve self-sufficiency. With this one-year grant, the center will be able to implement and hire a coordinator for a new program called Project HOPE. The program will help the hardest to employ find jobs, as well as offer intensive support and counseling

$40,000 awarded to BRIDGE Jobs, Inc. This nonprofit agency is dedicated to helping high school drop outs and unemployed and underemployed citizens of Mecklenburg County obtain long-term, career-enhancing employment by providing them with career counseling and support as they complete their education. Bridge will implement a Literacy Enrichment Program for women with children in high-risk and fragile neighborhoods. This one-year grant will provide a reading specialist to develop a curriculum for young adult women, as well as train and pay tutors and provide babysitting services.

2004 Grant Recipients
Judy Allison, Chair
Toni Freeman, Incoming Chair

$100,000 awarded to Pat's Place Child Advocacy Center, which focuses on the investigation, assessment, and treatment of child sexual abuse victims and their non-offending family members, as well as the prevention and prosecution of child sexual abuse cases. The grant of $50,000 per year over two years has enabled Pat's Place to hire a case worker who provides child-centered assistance to sexual abuse victims and their families. This grant provided the staff necessary to provide expedient case management, establish a computerized case tracking system and implement a parent support group.

$58,000 awarded to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department in order to establish the Gang of One program to address the growing presence of gangs in Charlotte. This one-year grant has enabled Gang of One to hire a program director and deliver valuable services to the youth of Mecklenburg County including: training sessions with more than 2,500 students in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, responses to more than 250 calls to the Gang of One hotline, and expansion of the Gang of One model to police precincts throughout the County.