Grants

Grant Application Instructions

The Women’s Giving Circle, a component fund of Your Community Foundation for North Central West Virginia, welcomes grant applications for organizations in Harrison, Taylor, Marion, Preston and Monongalia Counties in West Virginia that are addressing one or more of the following needs of women in our community:

• Increasing life skills of women and girls through education, economic empowerment, physical and mental health, and strategies for prevention of violence and crime
• Encouraging the healthy development of girls
• Promoting gender equity in our community

Empowering Women Through Philanthropy

The Women’s Giving Circle of North Central West Virginia is pleased to announce our ninth annual community grant opportunity. This year’s grants total $22,351 and the awards range from $1,000 to $5,000. Awards were presented to six local charitable organizations: Community Kitchen Inc.; St. Ursula Food Pantry and Outreach.; Monongalia County Child Advocacy Center; Pantry Plus More, Inc.; The Change Initiative; Patch of Taylor County; and Sierra Leone Rising.

Since its inception in 2014, the Women’s Giving Circle has gifted over $145,670.

In 2015, our first grant cycle, seven organizations received awards totaling $10,000 for their projects to support women and girls. In 2016, six organizations received awards totaling $11,500. In 2017, six organizations received awards totaling
$14,000. To date over $145,670 has been awarded. Grant funding has increased annually. With continued membership growth our future granting can be evermore generous.

2023 Grants Awarded

Monongalia County Child Advocacy Center
The training portion of this project will help Monongalia County Child Advocacy Center (MCCAC) better serve clients with diverse backgrounds by providing relevant and up to date education to staff.
We recently conducted a needs assessment and determined that one unmet need in our community is support for LGBTQ youth. These youth are at higher risk for depression and attempting suicide,
especially female teens. To better serve girls who identify as LGBTQ, we want to train staff members who work directly with clients every day. The second portion of this project focuses on mothers, foster mothers, and grandmothers who come to MCCAC as non-offending caregivers by providing them with individual and group supportive counseling so they can learn how to best support their children. This portion of the project will promote gender equity in the community by making sure that mother figures are empowered help their children heal.

Pantry Plus More
PPM works with all the Outreach Facilitators (OFs, or social workers) in the school system and through our emergency request form, we meet the food and other needs they identify in their families. In the first week of school this year, we processed 5 such requests, all of which included hygiene products. We are asking the Women’s Giving Circle to help us address the above problems by supporting the girls’ hygiene section of our Hygiene Room. This includes body wash, soap, hair care products, body lotion, skincare products such as facial cleanser in feminine scents as well as menstrual products and feminine wipes.

Community Kitchen Inc.
When one’s monthly budget is inadequate to meet even the need for an adequate amount of nutritious food, something winds up being compromised and in too many instances it is a woman’s personal needs that are sacrificed. Removing barriers to acquiring adequate supplies for menstrual health contributes to improved health and overall quality of life. Having access to free feminine hygiene products from a source in which women feel free to ask for these supplies is important to improving their quality of life. Our goal is to provide necessary feminine hygiene supplies discretely and at no cost to our women patrons.

St. Ursula Food Pantry and Outreach
Having a monthly period or being incontinent can be a hardship for girls/teen/adults/seniors especially when they don’t have the proper resources they need. Some may not be able to go to school because
they don’t have the necessary supplies. Some seniors may not go shopping because they may have an accident. By providing tampons/pads/adult depends will give dignity to our clients and they will be able to live a normal life.

Patch Coalition of Taylor County
Being awarded this grant would assist us in the continuation and expansion of this project and further promote menstrual equity and gender equity in our schools and community. We want to alleviate the interference with education and personal well-being that having a period sometimes causes. We want this basic biological need met for all women, regardless of socioeconomic status. We want the concept of having a period and menstrual products as a necessity (not a luxury) to be common place and accepted through education and proper access to products. In these efforts, we also want to strive for
a more financially and environmentally sustainable solution for each community member.

The Change Initiative
The Phoenix Recovery House was designed to incorporate evidence based practices and provide a recovery-focused living environment that is supportive and treatment focused. Our goals fit the criteria of the Women’s Giving Circle’s focus of increasing life skills through education, economic empowerment, physical and mental health. Our
program requires and facilitates mental and physical health services for women that otherwise might struggle to access these services.