Grant Recipients 2022

$40,000 Grant

One Life Counseling Center provides mental health counseling to those who cannot pay, with the belief that “no one should have to suffer alone; suicide is preventable; and treatment is available”. Mental health issues are on the rise, accelerated by the personal and economic impacts of Covid 19. OLCC is a skilled, energetic, and compassionate organization, which has embedded itself into its local San Carlos community, gaining their trust and support. Although just started in 2016, they are making a tremendous impact serving >4,500 clients through their counseling, advocacy, and education programs.

At the core of OLCC are its individual mental health counseling services. To provide counseling, they use 46 paid practitioners plus an additional 74 interns from local universities. Additionally, they partner with local elementary schools to provide on-site counseling for the swelling number of children who were adversely impacted by the pandemic. The third arm of their services is with community groups such as Samaritan House, and the PAL organizations, where they provide specialized counseling after tragic events in the community.

Impact

A grant from 100 Women would help fund the salary of a full-time bi-lingual therapist for their Uno Vida Program, enabling OLCC to provide accessible therapy to over 550 additional low-income, Spanish-speaking clients in crisis and in need of therapy and supportive services.  Uno Vida is the first and only Latina-led and Latina-serving mental health counseling center in San Mateo County, which opened in June 2022, providing culturally competent and accessible services.

$40,000 Grant

The news that you have cancer is always a chilling blow, but what if English is not your first language and you are struggling to make ends meet? How do you navigate medical treatment options and complex insurance processes, in addition to meeting your family’s basic food and housing needs without becoming overwhelmed? Enter Latinas Contra Cancer, an organization founded by Latina women to provide services to low-income Latina women in our community with a cancer diagnosis. Latinas Contra Cancer offers an all-inclusive support system, that provides culturally and linguistically sensitive health education, patient navigation, and survivorship support during this difficult time. This assistance is customized and can cover:

• Assistance to understand and navigate treatment options
• Address their legal rights for financial help, (especially undocumented patients)
• Access to travel options for their health visits, food for their family, cancer education, and support groups for their illness
• Personalized shopping at the wig and breast prostheses shop, which is an important part of the healing process. Latinas Contra Cancer ensures all women with cancer have access to the support they need regardless of their income, or whether their insurance covers their needs.

Impact

A grant from 100 Women will help fund the operations of Latinas Contra Cancer which has grown to serve over 1,000 Latina patients per year. Funds will be used to expand services in their three core programs: Patient Navigation and Advocacy, Survivor Support, and the Wig and Breast Prosthesis Boutique.

$40,000 Grant

Peninsula Food Runners serves San Mateo and Santa Clara County with 1,500+ volunteers delivering more than 60,000 meals a week. The goal of PFR is to alleviate hunger and reduce food waste by diverting edible surplus food to those in need. It is a free service – using their own cars and gas, volunteers pick up high-quality prepared and perishable food from restaurants, caterers, bakeries, wholesalers, farmers’ markets, schools, and hotels and deliver it directly to local shelters, neighborhood meal programs, and residents in affordable housing facilities. The food stays in the community it comes from and is delivered to appropriate venues. All of the pickups and deliveries are tracked by a food recovery software app that they developed.

PFR’s 10 years of experience and considerable success are very timely – they are well-placed to respond to the recent passing of California Senate Bill 1383, which requires large businesses to donate their surplus food. Already, new donors are offering increasingly larger donations

(500-2,000 pounds), and some new donors are hosting events that require pickups of 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of prepared foods, often at night when fewer volunteer drivers are available. For this reason, they would like to hire a driver.

Impact:

A grant from the 100 Women Charitable Foundation will pay the salary for part-time drivers for the cargo van, which is necessary because of an increase in the volume of donations. This will guarantee that all food donations are picked up and not wasted; it will also provide a job for someone in need.

$10,000 Grant

The San Jose branch of AAUW was founded in 1909 to promote equity and education for women and girls. The mission of AAUW’s Local Scholarship program in San Jose is to advance and support women in their pursuit of higher education. In the early 2000s, the Scholarship Committee noted that San Jose-area students were graduating at a significantly higher rate from high school than they were from college. The target population for the Local Scholarship project is students living in Santa Clara County who have completed their first two years of college with a 3.0 (or better) GPA and are seeking financial aid to support their efforts to obtain a four-year college degree. AAUW believes that educating women leads to economic security and family stability, greater professional and personal fulfillment, and healthier and more prosperous local communities. Most of their applicants are women of color, first-generation college students, students who speak English as a second language, and/or single parents. Over the past five years, 99% of scholarship recipients graduated, with 100% gaining employment after graduation.

IMPACT

The 100 Women grant will fund additional scholarships for 2023. Women face major challenges in their pursuit of higher education. Since 2016, the Local Scholarship Project has awarded more than $600,000 to 125 women, with $8,500 as the highest award. Promoting women’s college education promotes healthier communities: “An educated woman with increased earning potential is more likely to give back to the community than her male counterparts” (Borgen online magazine 2018).

$10,000 Grant

The Silicon Valley Urban Debate League (SVUDL) was founded in June 2014 by a coalition of local educators and community leaders to fill a startling gap in educational opportunities in the high-poverty schools in the area. They draw on the best strategies from a national network of 22 Debate Leagues across the country.

SVUDL empowers students to reach their full potential to become professional and community leaders by teaching critical thinking and communication skills through speech and debate programming. SVUDL helps high school students from low-income backgrounds in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties tap the power of their voices to compete, excel, and change the world through Speech and Debate. SVUDL has reached thousands of low-income students, providing them with critical thinking skills, self-efficacy, persuasive communication skills, teamwork, and other important life skills that have resulted in academic success. The skills taught in the Speech & Debate program, combined with opportunities to practice and demonstrate them in competition, are skills students can draw on for the rest of their lives.

IMPACT
A grant from 100 Women would support the 2023-2024 school year during which time they anticipate a 10% increase in the number of students served, as well as the addition of 1-2 new school partners. SVUDL’s goal for the upcoming school year is to serve more students and have an even greater impact by expanding its reach to help teachers enhance their lesson plans and bring a new skill set to students who deserve the opportunity.

$10,000 Winner

An independent affiliate of the national Rebuilding Together Organization, (RTSV) opened in Santa Clara County in 1991 to preserve homeownership for low-income people by making repairs and safety improvements on their homes – at no cost to clients. Upgrading homes (many are mobile homes), making them safer to live in and compliant with the standards of the mobile home parks, improves the health and emotional well-being of seniors, veterans, and other vulnerable and disabled people.

On the biannual “Rebuilding Days”, teams of volunteers rejuvenate homes and non-profit facilities. But the mainstay of the work is the Safe and Healthy Home Project. Throughout the year, house technicians and volunteers (with subcontractors for complex jobs) complete repairs and accessibility improvements. In 2022, they repaired and improved more than 300 homes. In light of the current housing crisis in Santa Clara Country, RTSV is fulfilling a critical need to keep disabled and low-income seniors in their homes, reducing evictions and homelessness, improving neighborhoods, preserving affordable housing, and reducing stress on homeowners.

Impact:

A grant from 100 Women will be earmarked for the Safe and Healthy Homes Project, making it possible for the organization to come closer to reaching its goal of improving 400 homes in 2023. On average, each home costs about $10,000 -12,000 to repair – and each one represents one or two seniors who can remain independent and safely housed in our communities.