Contact
Beth Krueger Hershel
Regional Marketing Coordinator
802.864.3667 x13
bhershel@goodnewsgarage.org

Burlington, Vt. — Vermont Works for Women (VWW) and Good News Garage (GNG) are partnering to deliver fresh food to Head Start programs in the Burlington area.

“Collaboration is something every nonprofit relies on and our organizations are proving how productive collaboration can be,” states Michael Muzzy, program director of Good News Garage.

The collaboration is actually three sided. Vermont Works for Women operates a culinary training program called FRESH Food that feeds hungry customers, local childcare centers need healthy meals for their children, and Good News Garage runs a transportation program, Ready To Go, that provides rides to work, daycare, and school for low-income families.

“We have our drivers pick up the meals at VWW’s kitchen every morning,” states Muzzy. “The chefs-in-training load up the food and deliver the lunches at five daycare centers and Head Start programs by noon.”

”Each program is doing what they do best while fulfilling a community need,” says Muzzy. “This is a win-win for everyone involved.”

During the school year, FRESH Food prepares an average of 100 meals daily for four Champlain Valley Head Start Daycare Centers in Burlington, two Howard Center groups operated out of the O’Brien Community Center in Winooski, as well as the Teen Center and After School Program run by the City of Winooski. This past summer, FRESH Food operated a second kitchen out of Winooski High School and served 275 meals a day for the City’s Summer Food Program.

One VWW trainee says of her experience: “On top of the job training I had at FRESH Food, I have taken lessons in nutrition and portion sizes from the kitchen and applied them to my meals at home, making them healthier and making them my own.”

About Vermont Works for Women

Vermont Works for Women helps women and girls recognize their potential and explore, pursue and excel in work that leads to economic independence. For more information about VWW, call (802) 655-8900 or visit on-line: www.vtworksforwomen.org.

Good News Garage

Good News Garage, a program of Lutheran Social Services, repairs donated cars and provides them to low-income families who need affordable and reliable transportation. For more information about GNG or to donate a car, call toll-free 877.GIVE.AUTO (448.3288) or visit on-line: www.GoodNewsGarage.org.

VTDigger

Contact: Beth Krueger Hershel, Regional Marketing Coordinator

Phone: 802.864.3667 x13

Email: bhershel@goodnewsgarage.org

Vermont Works for Women and Good News Garage Partner to Deliver Fresh Food to Head Start Programs

Burlington, Vt. — Vermont Works for Women (VWW) and Good News Garage (GNG) are partnering to deliver fresh food to Head Start programs in the Burlington area.

“Collaboration is something every nonprofit relies on and our organizations are proving how productive collaboration can be,” states Michael Muzzy, program director of Good News Garage.

The collaboration is actually three sided. Vermont Works for Women operates a culinary training program called FRESH Food that feeds hungry customers, local childcare centers need healthy meals for their children, and Good News Garage runs a transportation program, Ready To Go, that provides rides to work, daycare, and school for low-income families.

“We have our drivers pick up the meals at VWW’s kitchen every morning,” states Muzzy. “The chefs-in-training load up the food and deliver the lunches at five daycare centers and Head Start programs by noon.”

“Each program is doing what they do best while fulfilling a community need,” says Muzzy. “This is a win-win for everyone involved.”

During the school year, FRESH Food prepares an average of 100 meals daily for four Champlain Valley Head Start Daycare Centers in Burlington , two Howard Center groups operated out of the O’Brien Community Center in Winooski, as well as the Teen Center and After School Program run by the City of Winooski . This past summer, FRESH Food operated a second kitchen out of Winooski High School and served 275 meals a day for the City’s Summer Food Program.

One VWW trainee says of her experience: “On top of the job training I had at FRESH Food, I have taken lessons in nutrition and portion sizes from the kitchen and applied them to my meals at home, making them healthier and making them my own.”

Vermont Works for Women helps women and girls recognize their potential and explore, pursue and excel in work that leads to economic independence. For more information about VWW, call (802) 655-8900 or visit on-line: www.vtworksforwomen.org.

Good News Garage, a program of Lutheran Social Services, repairs donated cars and provides them to low-income families who need affordable and reliable transportation. For more information about GNG or to donate a car, call toll-free 877.GIVE.AUTO (448.3288) or visit on-line: www.GoodNewsGarage.org.

VTDigger

As the session winds down this week, it appears that the governor’s proposal to move incarcerated women from St. Albans to Chittenden County will sail through the legislature. The argument that the move will save the state nearly $2 million, plus assurances that it signals a fundamental shift in our approach to women in corrections, have ensured its safe passage.

As a taxpayer, I applaud efforts to be more efficient where possible and needed. As someone whose organization has run programs for incarcerated women for nearly a decade, I heartily embrace the idea that we can — indeed must! – be more creative in our approach to criminal justice. But if the move is to be successful, it is important that we face squarely the shift’s immediate implications – for women and for Corrections personnel who are charged with making it work.

The space into which the women will move cannot house the number of women currently incarcerated at Northwest. If the gym is not used as a dormitory, as the DOC has indicated it will not be, there will be 132 beds available for female inmates (the facility will still house approximately 16 male detainees and dedicate certain beds for detox purposes and mental health patients). Since the governor unveiled his proposal in late January, the number of women incarcerated at Northwest has fluctuated between 150 and 174. What are our options if the number of women exceeds the facility’s capacity? We must answer this question before the move in July.

The Chittenden facility is hard-pressed to meet basic programming needs. The facilities were designed to serve distinct purposes: Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility is a detention center; Northwest serves as a prison. Because men were not intended to serve out their sentences at Chittenden, the Center has little space that can appropriately accommodate individual treatment, vocational programming, case management, or visits with children. We must figure out how to provide certain services off-site to reduce space pressures that could limit programming within the facility.

Training and education opportunities at Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility pale in comparison to those at Northwest. Nearly two-thirds of the women cycling in and out of Vermont prisons have little to no employment experience. Vocational training and education have been identified by the Department as the highest need of women at significant risk of recidivating. As a detention center, Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility boasts little in the way of vocational training. There are 30 maintenance, library, or kitchen jobs within the facility. At Northwest, there are 69 jobs – plus opportunities to work in the print or auto shop or modular home building program. We must be willing to commit additional money to training – inside the facility and out — that builds technical and soft skills and provides participants with concrete measures of accomplishment.

In addition to addressing these immediate priorities we must all enthusiastically accept – as lawmakers, members of the administration and Department of Corrections, service providers, and advocates – that our work in “shifting the correctional paradigm” begins with the move in July. It is our habit as human beings, once something is accomplished, to wipe our brow and move on; there is always so much to do. The actual move is the easy part. The real challenge lies in making a long-term commitment – whether it be in or out of political fashion, whether we are flush or have pared our budget to the bone – to altering the practices and policies that have historically defined our approach to corrections.

If the move is authorized by the legislature as predicted, we must commit ourselves to fundamental change that is the product, not of a single, dramatic act, but of a process that engages our sustained attention and energy. To assume otherwise by believing we have done our bit is, as historian Fernand Braudel warns, to “blind the eye with clouds of smoke.”

I look forward to adding my shoulder to the wheel in the months ahead.

VTDigger

July 12, 2010

Contact: Dave Rubin, Vermont Green Project Director
Central Vermont Community Action Council
802-477-5086

Liz Schlegel, CVCAC, 802-279-4695

CVCAC Develops Statewide Energy Training Partnership
Vermont Green Seeks To Build Green Jobs Sector

Barre, VT – Central Vermont Community Action Council (CVCAC) is on track to distribute nearly $5,000,000 in ARRA funds to train Vermonters in solar, wind-power, weatherization, and other green jobs by the end of 2011.

The $4.86 million grant awarded to CVCAC by the US Department of Labor in January, is to coordinate green-job training across the state. CVCAC has created Vermont Green, (Vermont Growing Renewable Energy/Efficiency Employment Network), a statewide partnership to identify, create, and sponsor various training opportunities. The diverse array of partners includes private businesses, education institutions, organizations working directly with job seekers, and local government officials.

Similar to many Energy Training Partnership grant programs across the country, Vermont Green works with businesses to upgrade worker skills in renewable energy and energy efficiency fields. Corporate partners include Barre-based Northern Power Systems and SB Electronics, and Country Home Products of Vergennes. Under these partnerships, workers will be trained in the necessary skills of green industry manufacturing, working on wind turbine, solar and electric vehicle components.

“The ‘green’ sector of the economy offers a tremendous opportunity for Vermont,” notes project director David Rubin of CVCAC. “We want to make sure Vermonters workers can get the training they need, and Vermont employers can re-train their employees, so we can grow these good jobs in our state.”

One particularly important element of Vermont Green is that it is designed to bring unemployed or underemployed workers into the green sector. Career development counselors located in partner agencies around Vermont work one-on-one with job-seekers to upgrade their skills and find opportunities in green job fields.

Job-seekers are encouraged to contact their local Community Action agencies or Vermont Works For Women, or the Vermont Coalition of Runaway and Homeless Youth Programs (VCRHYP) to get in touch with a Vermont Green counselor. Businesses are also served through the Vermont Green program; the list of eligible jobs and training opportunities covers many sectors of the Vermont economy. Interested businesses should contact CVCAC’s Vermont Green office at 802-477-5086 or visit www.vtgreen.org.

# # #
About Central Vermont Community Action Council
Founded in 1965, Central Vermont Community Action Council helps people achieve economic sufficiency with dignity through individual and family development. CVCAC is part of the nationwide network of Community Action Agencies; a 501(c)3 nonprofit agency and a Community Development Corporation. The organization serves over 15,000 low-income Vermonters each year in Washington, Orange and Lamoille counties and offers a number of statewide programs. www.cvcac.org

VTDigger

“Faith” was afraid to open her mail. She used her debit card without knowing how much money she had in the bank. The consequence? Faith racked up a large number of overdraft fees and went deeper into debt.

A 35-year-old Burlington woman, who described herself as a “hard-core, angry person,” had relied on welfare benefits her entire adult life. Her teenage son was truant.

Another woman who quickly rose through the ranks at a bakery was terrified she would make a mistake, so she purposely sabotaged her own work and lost her job. She hadn’t been employed since.

Each woman was on a downward trajectory, financially and psychologically, until three nonprofit groups stepped in and enabled them to pull themselves out of desperate situations.

Faith keeps track of her spending and no longer incurs bank fees, and the 35-year-old woman holds a GED, her son is back in school, and she is working for a youth program. The woman who feared her own success? She’s now a star employee of Burlington Airport.

Faith was enrolled in Central Vermont Community Action Council’s “Build Your Money Muscles” program; the 30-something woman was part of a new work readiness program offered by Mercy Connections; and the former baker sought help from a transitional jobs program provided by Vermont Works for Women.

The three organizations received funding for these programs through the Vermont Women’s Fund. An anonymous donor recently gave the foundation $100,000 for community-based programs, spurring the fund to spearhead a strategic partnership initiative. The Vermont Women’s Fund gave each selected nonprofit $30,000 to develop programs over a two-year period that would help women achieve economic security by giving them the support they need to find employment and to overcome entrenched, multi-generational poverty.

The Vermont Women Fund’s targeted, sustained initiative was a first for the foundation, which typically caps its grants at $10,000 a year. Since the Vermont Women’s Fund was created 12 years ago to support the well-being of women and girls, it has distributed $1 million to 127 organizations.

As Catherine Kalkstein, executive director of the foundation, put it at a forum last week: “This initiative was envisioned as a catalyst for social change for Vermont women and girls. We were hoping to create
some long-term impact.”

Each group took a different approach to helping women who lacked the resources to escape an abusive relationship or the skills to hold down a job – let alone balance a checkbook.

But several central themes emerged from the Vermont Women’s Fund forum held at Vermont College last Thursday. The advocates from the three groups, who had compared notes over the course of the grant period, said they often provided intensive psychological support for women through group sessions and mentoring. Once trust is established with women who have experienced extreme hardship they are much better prepared to take practical steps to better their lives, the advocates said.

The Barre-based Central Vermont Community Action Council, which provides emergency assistance and food aid to local residents in need, held 48 support-group style sessions on personal finance. Margaret Ferguson, a certified financial planner, helped more than 50 women cope with their fears about money by showing them how to control their expenditures.

Mercy Connections, an offshoot of the Sisters of Mercy in Burlington, created a community network for women “on the edges” of poverty and a work-readiness program that helped women with troubled histories rethink their life stories and develop the capacity to learn new skills. The program also provides mentoring for women as they look for work.

Vermont Works for Women, a Winooski-based nontraditional employment program, surveyed women in the state correctional system and asked them about their work histories. The group found that 66 percent of those arrested were unemployed at the time of their arrest, and of those who had jobs half had been employed for less than a year. A third had been working for less than three months.

Tiffany Bluemle, executive director of Vermont Works for Women, said, “Most told us they had not given much thought to employment.” For the women they surveyed, she said, the prospect of finding work, much less staying at a job, was an overwhelming prospect.

Vermont Women at Work researched transitional employment programs in urban areas and then launched its own project. In a 10-month period, the organization enrolled 33 women in work readiness programs and placed 21 in jobs with 16 area employers.

One of the Vermont Women’s Fund grant requirements was an evaluation of each program by an independent consultant. Advocates from all three groups cautioned that the overall results should be judged on anecdotal or qualitative evidence, rather than quantitative data. They said the women they serve often have intractable psychological problems made more complicated by patterns of substance abuse, long-term familial poverty and abusive family relationships that take time to resolve.

In the interest of full disclosure: Vermont Women’s Fund is a component fund of the Vermont Community Foundation. Vtdigger.org is a recipient of a $6,000 grant from VCF.

VTDigger