A Visit to the White House in Washington, DC

http://www.google.com/

On December 18th, 2010, ten women from the Women's Giving Circle will tour the White House all decorated for the Holidays.  The WGC was given ten tickets by Jenny Kaplan, a Fayetteville native who is on the staff at the White House and spoke to our group at the member meeting in November of 2009.  Her mom, Chris Yeager, is also a member of the WGCF. 

The members who will travel on behalf of the WGC are:

Alisa Debnam

Michelle Courie

Christin Bellian

Kim Nagowski

Laura Devan

Libby Daniel

Mary Flagg Haugh

Patty Collie

Denise Lynch

Susan Barnes

We promise to share pictures when we return!

Fayetteville Observer: Homeless need more than food, shelter

Originally published on Saturday, November 13, 2010 in the Local & State category.

Homeless need more than food, shelter

By Bill Kirby Jr.

Columnist
Terri Union says there’s more to addressing the homeless issue than just providing shelter and food, and she is part of an organization that wants to do its part.

On my blog — The Gospel Truth, I Think, at www.fayobserver.com — Jason Brady is back, and he says more than 300 people have registered for today’s fifth annual Ribbon Walk & Ride for Cancer at Festival Park, with more anticipated.

Your turn: “I found your (Oct. 9) article about the homeless, in response to the question from Carol Anderson, interesting,” Mrs. Union writes. “I didn’t know there had been a group appointed several years ago to work on this issue. I thought you would like to know the Women’s Giving Circle of Fayetteville presented a community scorecard on homelessness to a number of people who represent the agencies who work with or provide funding for homeless people and homeless families. This is an important issue that must be addressed in our community.

“The focus for grants this year ...will be on funding to help resolve this issue. It is not just about providing beds; it is about helping people change their lives. We need to help these people become employable so they can again be contributing members of society ... It is important to provide beds in a safe environment and acceptable food. However, this is treating a symptom and not really providing the help and means of changing the situation. What do you think?”

My turn: I think, Mrs. Union, that the WGCF is on to something. There is, as you suggest, more to it than just providing shelter and food. If concerned leaders in this community really want to address the homeless issue, they have to work at getting our homeless brethren back on their feet with social involvement and, if possible in these difficult economic times, employment. And if that is where the Women’s Giving Circle of Fayetteville is placing a measure of its focus, then I say all the better, and the best to you.
Local leaders did form a coalition in February of 2006 as part of a nationwide effort to reduce homelessness, but Mrs. Anderson said she had not seen much action from the group. If anyone would know about helping the homeless in this community, it would be Mrs. Anderson. She is dedicated to ending the plight of the homeless. All I remember is that I wasn’t impressed with some of the coalition’s members, who had a lot of capital letter alphabet behind their names, plenty of lip service and little more. Otherwise, I’ve looked at the WGCF website, and the facts and figures provided about homelessness in the county are eye-opening. Kudos to Alisa Debnam, Cynthia Wilson, Michelle Courie, Kaki Van Sickle, Jean Harrison, Christin Bellian, Patty Collie, Denise Wyatt, Lucy Jones, Mary Lynn Bryan, Laura Devan, Margaret Dickson, Sarah Moorman and you, Mrs. Union, who are among the WGCF members striving to make arealdifference in helping those who brave winter and summer under bridges and in wooded areas without homes to call their own. For more information on the WGCF, contact Susan Barnes at susan@cumberlandcf.org or call (910) 483-4449.

Editorial: Shelter - Homelessness hits women, children hardest

Article in the Fayetteville Observer about the WGC Think Tank on Homelessness in the Cumberland County Community:

Published: 12:00 AM, Sun Oct 24, 2010

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/10/24/1042024?sac=Opin

For too many Cumberland County residents, this is anything but home, sweet home. It's no home at all.

We have a big problem with homelessness. There are about twice as many homeless people in Cumberland as in Forsyth, another urban county with about the same population. We have nearly as many homeless as far-larger Wake County.
 
The good news is that overall numbers of our unsheltered residents are declining. The official tally shows homeless have dropped from 1,074 in 2008 to 965 last year. That's a decline of about 10 percent.

But there's a dark side: The numbers of homeless women and children grew in that same period, from 560 to 655, up 17 percent. That includes nearly 400 homeless children.

Many people who work with homeless residents say those numbers are low, that many more haven't been counted - especially children.

There is one other piece of good news in this sad saga: a fast-growing, remarkably effective new philanthropy has targeted homelessness as a problem needing a solution. The Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville, which gives sizable grants to programs that improve the lives of women and children, has launched a project to study and find effective solutions to homelessness in this county.

The group especially wants to put roofs over the heads of unsheltered women and children. That is a noble and achievable goal. We're not talking about people who live under bridges or out in the woods by choice - people whose plight is not easily altered. Instead, these are people who have lost their homes largely because of economic or domestic problems.

There are solutions everywhere. At a "think tank" breakfast earlier this month, the Giving Circle handed out a letter-sized sheet covered on both sides with a directory of services for the homeless. They include shelters, "transitional" housing, meals, help with utilities, food assistance, medical care, mental health services and help for victims of domestic violence.

Two things were notably absent: overall coordination and permanent housing.

A lot of organizations are doing good things for the homeless - feeding them, clothing them, providing a place to sleep, and more. But there's not a lot of coordination evident.

Communities with successful programs for the homeless have one agency working to coordinate efforts and also have programs that put the homeless back in permanent housing as quickly as possible. This is especially effective for families.

We hope the Giving Circle will take a close look at both of those issues. And we thank members for tackling the problem. We're confident they'll make a difference.

NC Gives highlights the WGC on their Website

http://ncgives.org/news/local-giving-circle-reaches-out-to-homeless-women-and-children/

Local giving circle reaches out to homeless women and children

October 18, 2010

The Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville was founded through a partnership between NCGives and the Cumberland Community Foundation. (A "giving circle" is a group of everyday folks who join forces to give their time, talent and treasure to a common cause.)

Here's a story about how these local ladies are coming together to give back and help homeless women and children in their community:

"Women's Giving Circle focuses on helping the homeless"
(The Fayetteville Observer)

A home helped change the trajectory of J.R. Williams' life. "We were doomed, statistically speaking," Williams told a group of about 80 people at the Holiday Inn Bordeaux Tuesday morning.

When he was 9, his family lived in housing that was unreliable and sub-par at best. Both his parents had grown up poor, and his mother had gotten pregnant with Williams at age 17. It wasn't a promising life script.

Then the family was able to get a home through Habitat for Humanity and, through it, they achieved stability and the opportunity for a better life. "It meant so much to us," said Williams, who went on to graduate near the top of his high school class and then to both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke. He's now a first vice president and regional business development manager with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Charlotte.

His listeners included people from throughout the community who'd been invited by the Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville to help brainstorm ideas to help homeless women and children in Cumberland County. The philanthropic group concentrates on local projects that meet the basic needs of food, shelter or health care for women and children, and members said Tuesday that homelessness is a particular problem...

Read the full article

Women's Giving Circle Focuses On Helping the Homeless

Published in the Fayetteville Observer: 12:00 AM, Wed Oct 13, 2010

Women's Giving Circle focuses on helping the homeless

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By Catherine Pritchard
Staff writer

A home helped change the trajectory of J.R. Williams' life.

"We were doomed, statistically speaking," Williams told a group of about 80 people at the Holiday Inn Bordeaux Tuesday morning. When he was 9, his family lived in housing that was unreliable and sub-par at best. Both his parents had grown up poor, and his mother had gotten pregnant with Williams at age 17.
It wasn't a promising life script.

Then the family was able to get a home through Habitat for Humanity and, through it, they achieved stability and the opportunity for a better life.

"It meant so much to us," said Williams, who went on to graduate near the top of his high school class and then to both UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke. He's now a first vice president and regional business development manager with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Charlotte.

His listeners included people from throughout the community who'd been invited by the Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville to help brainstorm ideas to help homeless women and children in Cumberland County. The philanthropic group concentrates on local projects that meet the basic needs of food, shelter or health care for women and children, and members said Tuesday that homelessness is a particular problem.
Patty Collie, a member of the giving circle, said the number of homeless people in Cumberland County dropped 10 percent from 2008 to 2009. But the numbers of homeless women and children grew.
Of 965 people identified as homeless on a specific date in 2009, 256 were women and 399 were children. Both numbers were up nearly 17 percent over 2008.

Meanwhile, she said, Cumberland County's homeless numbers are striking when compared with other counties. Forsyth County's total population is close to Cumberland's - 337,198 in 2008, compared with 309,542 here. But it had half the number of homeless people.

Wake County's total population then was 829,218, more than twice Cumberland's, but its homeless population was only slightly higher than Cumberland's, at 1,152.

"The statistics were so heart-breaking to us," Collie said later.

After Williams spoke, the meeting broke into small groups, each addressing ways to deal with homelessness locally, especially with women and children. Their ideas were written down and will be combined into a summary that will be the focus of another meeting on the subject in November.

"The hope from that is that we actually do get a pilot project to fund," Collie said.

Invitation to Women's Giving Circle Social

Philanthropy Journal Highlights Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville

Fayetteville women meet local needs

PJ staff report | July 27, 2010
Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville

Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. - In just its third year of operation, a group of Fayetteville women is infusing the local community with $50,000 to improve the lives of women and children.

Created in early 2008 through a grant from NCGives, the Women's Giving Circle of Fayetteville has been adding to its ranks, and its coffers, with 2010 grants almost doubling the total awarded in 2009.

The increase in funding comes as the recession takes a disproportionate toll on women and families in Cumberland County.

While homelessness overall in the county fell 10 percent from 2008 to 2009, homelessness among women and children grew by more than 16 percent over the same time period, says the circle's Annual Scorecard, a collection of data used to educate circle members on the plight of the county's residents.

Teen pregnancy rates in the county stood at 74.5 per 1,000 residents, higher than the overall rate for the state of 58.6 per 1,000, and almost one in four children in the county live in poverty, the scorecard says.

Created with a mission of promoting philanthropy among women and meeting the needs of women and children in Cumberland County, the circle started with 14 members and now has 115 on its rolls.

Each member pledges to donate $550 a year for three years, with $400 of that allocated to a grantmaking pool, $100 deposited into an endowment and the remaining $50 used to cover administrative costs.

While the fund is administered by the Cumberland County Community Foundation, the circle's members are in charge of choosing the beneficiaries of its grants.

For the 2010 grant cycle, the members elected to focus awards on the basic needs of women and children, including food, shelter and health care.

The Cumberland County Department of Public Health received $20,000 for its Baby Store Project, a program that provides baby supplies to maternity patients that participate in prenatal care and education.

The circle awarded $12,500 to the Center for Economic Empowerment and Development to support its Lease to Home Program, which allows low-income families to rent homes with the goal of eventually purchasing the home.

St. Ann Neighborhood Youth Center received $7,500 for its Community Afterschool and Summer Program, an outreach effort that provides tutoring to children in public housing and other high-poverty areas.

Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina was awarded $4,500 to provide educational materials and information to teens who are at risk of becoming pregnant.

The Child Advocacy Center received $4,000 to produce and distribute child-abuse prevention materials for several local programs.

And Hungry Angelz received $1,500 to provide food for homeless children during the weekends.