$10,000 Rappahannock Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Helping Child Trauma Victims: CASA addresses the need for children who have been harmed by their parents to be protected from further harm and empowered by interventions designed to help them heal and succeed. This program matches traumatized children with trained volunteers who regularly visit the children to offer support, assess their needs and make sure they're safe.
$4,000 Girl Smarts (Rockhill Elementary, Moncure Elementary, Hampton Oaks Elementary and Lafayette Upper Elementary) Girls Smarts: is a series of workshops that gives 4th and 5th grade girls practical skills like how to present themselves with strong body language, how to shake hands with confidence, how to express themselves especially when they want to say "no" to something, and how to maintain the essence of their authentic selves as they develop into who they will become as women.
Browse our Women & Girls Fund grants from prior years.
$5,000 Open Hand of Fredericksburg Grad Program Manager: The Grad Program addresses two fundamental needs 1. empowering and motivating potentially at-risk youth to work towards a successful life by staying in school and achieving sustainable employment, and 2. transforming the lives of youth by building life and career skills. Open Hand will add four additional internships earmarked for females.
$2,500 Rappahannock Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) Advocacy for Abused and Neglected Girls: CASA speaks up for the well-being of children who have been abused or neglected by their parents. Women and Girls funding will be used to support girls who are served by CASA volunteers.
$6,000 Recovery in Motion The Women's Initiative: Recovery in Motion is the only peer-run mental health facility in the area. Trained facilitators deliver free support groups; these classes and education groups will be designed to empower adult women with real life skills to aid in their recovery. Focus areas will include financial literacy, employment readiness, yoga and nutrition, and art therapy. This program seeks to reduce the barriers and stigma associated with treatment that are specific to women's mental health.
$6,500 Stafford Junction Life Skills Workshop: This workshop program assists low income women with very few community resources and offers her financial independence as well as nutritional and parenting support.
$2,500 Friends of the Rappahannock Girl Scout Equality Project: FOR noticed that while thousands of Boy Scouts utilize their property to camp, canoe and enjoy activities, there is a serious lack of Girl Scout groups enjoying the same activities. FOR will develop and pilot a Girl Scout badge program that focuses on outdoor river recreation and environmental education.
$5,000 Germanna Community College Education Foundation Video to Promote Awareness of Relationship Violence and Stalking: Germanna will produce a public service video that will address the serious problems of dating, domestic and sexual violence that impacts their students. The video will be a core component of the Student Development course, a required course for all new students.
Support Care Women Coping with Loss: This will be the only non-denominational support group in our area that focuses on grieving women. Two very critical components of Women Coping with Loss will be helping the bereaved to better understand their behavior and to identify healthy coping mechanisms. Activities will include helping the individual learn coping strategies for anniversaries, holidays, birthdays, and other milestones. Another will be how to adjust daily routines and the importance of seeking out activities to help fill their time and renew their joy. Once the group is established, Hospice Support Care's Bereavement Services Coordinator will work closely with the group facilitator to identify specific ways to address each individual's needs.
$4,800 Open Hand of Fredericksburg GRAD Summer Internships for Girls: Open Hand provides paid summer internships, on the job training, and successful employment experiences to under-resourced and at-risk high school students. In the last four years, females have only made up 30-40% of their program participants. Although they can equally benefit from this opportunity, females are less likely to be identified by their guidance counselors. Grant funding will allow Open Hand to add three more internships to the GRAD program and to earmark them specifically for females to help increase female participation to at least 50%.
$1,000 Kate Waller Barrett Parent Teacher Organization Girl Smarts Workshops: Workshops build solid leadership skills and self-confidence, enhancing a girl's ability to overwhelm negativity by providing thoughtful strategies and alternatives. Workshops also dispel myths of perfection and offer specific tools to help girls flourish.
$5,663 Stafford Junction, Inc. Life Skills Workshops: By providing access to education for the development of technical skills, and providing appropriate career preparedness and overall life skills in our community, Stafford Junction will help to enhance the abilities and increase the potential for success for the women in the families they serve.
$11,900 Empowerhouse Defining and Promoting Healthy Relationships: Empowerhouse will create three short youth focused teen dating violence and cyber-bullying themed films for use in adult facilitated classroom education. Social media distribution will increase youth accessibility.
$3,000 AIKIDO in Fredericksburg "Aikido for At-Risk High School Girls" - High school girls will learn and practice Aikido at the Aikido in Fredericksburg "dojo". Aikido is a traditional, yet non-violent, modern martial art that focuses on effective conflict resolution and personal growth. Grant money will support 50% of the cost for girls to participate in three month sessions of Aikido classes. Aikido in Fredericksburg will match the grant money dollar fordollar. Expenses include student handbook, uniform, and dues for each participating girl as well as three educational/information sessions at local high schools to orient program participants.
$6,326 Hugh Mercer Elementary School "Stemgirls" - The goal in STEMGIRLS is to excite girls in science, technology, engineering, and math by using hands-on project-based learning programs, using mostly Legos but exposing them to some robotics. The mission of this program is to inspire young girls in science and technology, encourage innovation, and foster life skills and capabilities including self-confidence, communication and leadership. Grant money will support two trained facilitators for 39 hours of planned meetings. Hugh Mercer will purchase 4 age appropriate Lego kits, along with notebooksand supplies for each student. Students will use these to record findings, problems encountered, strategies to solve the problems and how they were resolved.
$5,000 Fredericksburg Pregnancy Center "Mobile Outreach Unit" - Fredericksburg Pregnancy Center’s (FPC) has witnessed the need to reach clients in the five counties served surrounding Fredericksburg with a mobile unit that will travel to a closer proximity to their home. The goal of FPC is to be at a mobile location in each of the five counties one day per week from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm so that a maximum of six clients could be scheduled each day. Locations will have 2 to 3 staff on site. Grant funds will be used to train nurses, purchase medical supplies, insurance, and gas to reach these rural areas.
$3,674 Stafford Junction Life Skills Workshops - Research has shown that the results of programs for children can be dramatically enhanced by focusing on the development of adults, especially the mothers, who play a key role in the lives ofchildren. Our Life Skills Workshops is designed to upgrade adults’ and youth abilities, and increase their potential for success. We provide resources and information on healthy living, financial literacy, and self-development. From September through May, weekly workshops present the opportunity to be exposed to information and resources that allow adults to feel betterabout themselves, and empower their role as a parent or working adult. Funding will be used for personnel and for gasoline expenses and transportation to and from the workshops and other selected locations. Most participants do not have any means of transportation.
$6,000 Fredericksburg Counseling Services, Inc. Funding will be used to purchase materials that will help low income mental health care consumers and their caregivers increase their education and understanding of women and girls issues. The remainder will be used for general operating support for our region's free mental health clinic.
$2,500 Girl Smarts Program ( Girl Smarts teaches 4th and 5th grade girls skills to stay positive, become more self-confident, deal with bullying and develop into strong young women who make appropriate decisions and achieve their goals.
$5,600 Healthy Families Rappahannock Area Systematically identifies the strengths and needs of women at risk for poor parenting outcomes, to promote the development of healthy parent/child relationships through the provision of intensive, long-term, home visiting services, to promote the physical, mental, emotional and social health of mothers and children.
$5,000 Rappahannock Legal Services, Inc. The "Divorce Resource Project" will increase the number of women who will have access to free, high-quality legal advice and representation through two separate activities. First, produce a continuing legal education course offered gratis to attorneys who will be expected to take at least one pro bono divorce per year. Second, help those women who are able to handle their divorce without an attorney through a free legal clinic which walks clients through the divorce process so that the women in our area will have access to a reliable source of legal information.
Supports work to produce a series of short films targeted to healthcare workers to educate them on how to safely inquire about domestic violence and how to connect victims with confidential, free, and local domestic violence services.
Allows for young girls (ages 9-11) to attend a series of workshops designed to develop skills to stay positive, become more self-confident, and develop ways to manage such issues and challenges as bullying and relationships.
$4,500 Chaplin Youth Center Supports the “Girls Only” program. The program works with girls ages 12-17 who need to learn skills to protect themselves from gangs and drugs while helping them develop better decision-making skills.
$4,000 Healthy Families Rappahannock Area General operating support for no-cost family strengthening services for new mothers who exhibit risk factors for potential child abuse/neglect.
$8,000 Science Saturdays Provides opportunities for young women to get excited about science and math in a non-threatening environment with a goal to empower them to find new avenues of study which will, in turn, open opportunities for them to pursue well-paying careers.
$2,600 Thrive: The Healing Center Offers the 10-week Thriving Financially financial literacy program to some of the 11,000 area women living in poverty. Uses the FDIC’s Money Smart curriculum to reduce monetary disadvantages and to increase financial knowledge and economic self-sufficiency.
$11,000 Rappahannock Council Against Sexual Assault Program support designated to bring a pilot program on sexual violence prevention that focuses on student safety and teen dating violence prevention to the Spotsylvania school system.
$3,000 Rappahannock Big Brothers Big Sisters Healthy Relationships to “Littles” Program intended to help girls understand teen dating violence, enable them to reach out to someone who may have been a victim of dating violence, and increase help-seeking behavior among girls involved in an unsafe relationship.
$13,000 Rappahannock Council on Domestic Violence Middle School Girls, Promoting Safe and Healthy Relationships program that provides 10-week facilitated support groups for middle school girls in King George, Caroline and Spotsylvania counties where girls exposed to and victims of relational violence learn alternatives to the unhealthy messages, realities, and role models surrounding them.
$2,000 Science Saturdays Provides school-aged girls with fun and educational science-oriented sessions helping them understand and identify with higher-paying employment sectors. Sessions included electrical engineering, biology and forensics, and chemistry.