At its July 2nd, 2013, board meeting, the board of the FHL Foundation made the following grants:
1) Barret House – $10,000
Over its history, the Barrett Foundation has done remarkable work in providing housing. Through the Shelter (Barrett House), Group Home (Casa Milagro) and various Apartment Programs (Bridges, Casa Socorro and Casa Verde), every night over 80 women and children are safe and secure under a roof. So as to use this housing as a vehicle to make homelessness short-lived we have aligned our housing into an integrated “system of care” where women and children can move from the shelter to transitional living, to permanent, independent housing.
Supportive Services are vital to jumpstart the women as they move forward on their journey toward independence. To this end, the Barrett Foundation has dramatically increased the scope of depth of service provided to the women of the Barrett House Shelter. There are now life skill development groups, parenting classes, relapse prevention groups, and tutoring for the children to name a few.
2) Imagination Library of Grant County – $20,000
The proposal is two-fold. It will entail:
1. Gathering related literature on the effect of electronic books on emergent readers.
2. Conducting a study comparing e-books and print books. A group of 25 randomly selected preschoolers attending a local daycare center will each read three electronic books. They will respond to questions about the problem in the story, the setting, the characters, and the story sequence: beginning, middle, and end of the story. These results will be gathered from a retelling of the story and responses to specific questions which will be recorded by the teacher. The control group will be a randomly selected group of 25 preschoolers attending another daycare center. These children will have the same titles in print format read to them by a teacher and will be asked the same questions. The data will be collected over a three-week period in September and analyzed using statistical methods. The proposed study will add new information to the body of knowledge, especially when considering the southwest population of preschoolers involved in the study.
We are collaborating with Dr. Ann Harvey, Associate Professor of Reading at Western New Mexico University, who will be the lead in conducting this study. She and her staff as well as teachers at local daycare centers will be responsible for data gathering, interviews, testing and training. We will monitor the process through her. She will be retained as an independent contractor responsible for the completion of the project for our organization.
3) Vero Beach Museum – $17,500
The Distinguished Professor Lecture Series (DPS) is a unique partnership with select local alumni/ae groups to present a diverse and enlightening program of scholarship in the humanities for our community. The local chapters of these groups maintain strong social bonds with their alma maters, and work with them to bring scholars to sustain those connections. The Museum offers the ideal setting in its Leonhardt Auditorium to host these speakers for each alumni/ae group, in exchange for organizing and opening up as a public program. In this mutually beneficial relationship, colleges and universities remain in touch with their constituents by engaging a speaker from their campus in a unique venue, while the Museum hosts a broad range of academics speaking on diverse topics. In 2014 the DPS celebrates 23 years.
The Museum recognizes that five programs is the optimal number for its audience in a busy season of activity, and is focusing its selections on the following criteria: participation history, attendance history in past programs, and a visible and active local alumni group and audience. Participating schools in 2014 are Skidmore College, Smith College, Sweet Briar College, the University of Virginia, and Williams College.
Congratulations to all of the Summer 2013 Grants recipients!
