Fund For Girls

The Fund for Women and Girls has been established to promote programs that will encourage a positive change and enhanced well-being of women and girls in Decatur County. Grant applications were solicited from throughout Decatur County. A committee sifted through all grant applications, paring it down to three projects. The winning project is detailed below

	Organization: Decatur County Family YMCA Name of Project: Y-H.E.L.P - Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program Describe the Project Purpose The goal of our program is to Activate, Educate and Motivate the women and girls who participate in the Y-H.E.L.P program. It will be a free six-week program that will meet twice a week. The program includes weight tracking, healthy eating guidelines and pedometer. The participants will work with a nutritionist and fitness coaches who will assist with setting and reaching the personal wellness goals for each participant. This will make it possible to personalize the prescribed activities to meet the needs of the person and not offer a blanket approach, which can often be over-whelming to a person who has been more sedentary and new to regular exercise. Why do you feel this program is important for Decatur County? Unfortunately, the citizens of Decatur County mirror the statistics of the State of Indiana . One can also quickly see the number of overweight children in our county and city schools. The YMCA wants to assume a leadership role in an effort to inform women and girls of all ages that exercise and diet are important factors in maintaining a healthy weight and can help avoid many disease caused by unhealthy weight such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. If these diseases can be avoided- the quality of life is improved as well as the length of one's life. How many women and/or girls will this impact? Thirty women and/or girls will be impacted by the program.

	Organization: Greensburg/Decatur County Chamber of Commerce Name of Project: Women in Business Describe the Project Purpose The Women in Business Program would be a multi-week training course designed by the Chamber in conjunction with the Small Business Development Center in Bloomington to empower women to become small business owners. The course would help them determine the feasibility of their business idea, research their target audience, write a formal business plan, understand their credit report and business financing and give them tips on product marketing. The course will be taught by fellow women in business who can share their success stories to inspire and motivate the women to reach for their dreams. The grant would allow for us to hire a business consultant from the Small Business Development Center to facilitate the class which would improve the overall effectiveness of the program. Why do you feel this program is important for Decatur County? Over the last five years, Decatur County has lost nearly 1500 jobs primarily due to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the automotive industry. Over 51% of our manufacturing base in still automotive related and therefore creates a potential for additional loss of jobs in the future. The Greensburg/Decatur County Chamber of Commerce would like to take a different approach to creating future jobs for our citizens by encouraging the spirit of entrepreneurship. According to research by the SBDC, "Microenterprise fulfills three basic goals of economic development in the United States: it stimulates job creation, impacts community rebuilding (in communities with weak economies), and it increases economic self-sufficiency." The Chamber of Commerce has been helping businsses within our community for over 100 years and through the support of its 300 active business members, has the best opportunity to create, market and maintain a small business development program. First, our strong working relationship with the Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC) will provide us the necessary tools and materials to develop a strong curriculum for the program. Second, a major part of the success of a business development program is access to assistance outside of the classroom. The Chamber has a full time staff dedicated to serving the business community including an executive director who worked in management positions within the business community for over 12 years prior to joining the Chamber. Lastly, the Chamber's strong reputation for supporting the community and proven ability to launch successful programs will lend credibility to the program and allow us to use our variety of marketing tools to promote the program and recruit participants. The proof of our past successes can be seen in other organizations that were started as a result of chamber initiatives such as the Decatur County United Fund, the Decatur County Community Foundation, the Arts & Cultural Council, the Economic Development Corporation, Tourism Commission, the Community Learning Center and Envision Decatur County. The reason we have chosen to design our small business program specifically for women is, according to findings from The Self-Employment Learning Project: a Five-Year Study of Microentrepreneurs, a hallmark of microenterprise programs is their ability to effectively reach large numbers of minorities, women, and the poor. The clientele of microenterprise programs breaks down demographically as follows: 78% are women; 62% are from a minority ethnic or racial group, and 43% have incomes below the poverty level. How many women and/or girls will be impacted by your program? Initially, the class will be limited to no more than 20 participants but we hope this will be an on-going program which will be able to be repeated at least annually through financial support from corporate sponsors and tuition fees. Having a successful first class will aide us in attracting corporate sponsorship and larger grant assistance since we will be able to show viability for the program.

	Organization: New Point Kiwanis Club Name of Project: New Point Skill Builders (Women & Girls Learning and Sharing Skills) Describe Project Purpose This project would bring women and girls together to share ideas, have fun and learn new skills. Some ideas presented at our Kiwanis meeting included: crochet (one woman in our club is already teaching a class at the New Point Christian Church each week), quilting, pie baking, painting, drawing, crafts, cooking sewing, computer, folk dancing music ceramics, flower arranging, career choices etc. Why do you feel this program is important for Decatur County? Many of the skills the older generation learned from their mothers and grandmothers, from 4-H, Home Ec. in school etc. are not being passed down to the younger generation.This program could help both generations come to learn or relearn these skills. How many women and/or girls will be impacted by your program? The program would be available to all women and girls in the area so it is hard to say how many would come but we would hope as many as 100 would be interested.


	Organization: Purdue University College of Technology, Columbus Name of Project: Learning to Lead Workshop for Women & Girls Project Describe Project Purpose The workshop goals: 1) To help girls/women develop their self-confidence in order to go after their goals and dreams. This would be done by providing: a) career interest assessments b) mentors c) a shadow day. We will ask Purdue graduates in the community to volunteer their time as mentors. We will also look to others in the business community to provide these opportunities. 2) To teach girls/women leadership skills so they can tackle anything and lead others to follow them. This would be done by: a) activities and exercises on the basics of leadership, confronting the fear of conflict, and assertiveness training. 3) To provide the girls/women with a list of avenues to achieve their goals/objectives. This would be done by providing: a) a list of possible entrepreneurial projects (especially those with a high chance of being successful, like those in the technical, medical or service industries or discussion of other goals (i.e., applying for college, technical training, or applying for a job) b) A list of ways to execute these objectives 4) As an outcome of the project, the girls/women would be asked to outline their projects/goals and present these outlines to the group with their mentors. 5) Participants will use the laptop computer lab for some career activities and presentations, learning to research career resources and use PowerPoint. 6) Two Sessions would be held - one for women and one for girls ages 12-16. Why do you think this program is important for Decatur County? Purdue University College of Technology proposes to foster an interest in career development and higher education through a series of workshops. Our county's education level is about 50% of the national average of residents who have completed a bachelor's degree or higher. We propose to target those school communities with the lowest college participation rates in our workshop advertisements. A partnership with Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Decatur County may help us to identify girls who could benefit from career mentoring. We will ask them to help us in our publicity efforts. How many women and/or girls will be impacted by your program? There will be 40 spaces in the workshop, but we hope that we can impact more women and girls by our mentoring/job shadow program.