Westminster Neighborhood Services 2021 Residual Grant Report

Westminster Neighborhood Services received a residual grant of $17,038 in June 2021 from Impact 100 Greater Indianapolis. They submitted the following report in December 2021 to keep our members informed on how the grant money was used.

How did the unrestricted fund strengthen your organization?

The unrestricted fund from Impact 100 strengthened our organization by allowing us to expand staffing in our youth program. We were able to bring on Education Coordinator to work full time on improving our youth programming as well as develop the middle and high school program. Our Education Coordinator began as an AmeriCorps partner last year who researched middle and high school programs and began putting together the blueprint for our middle and high school program. Being able to hire her full time has meant there was no gap in creating our program. Thanks to this grant, our middle school program is thriving and our high school program is ready to launch.

Describe the specific successes achieved as a result of receiving the unrestricted funds from Impact 100 Greater Indianapolis.

As a result of receiving these funds, our Education Coordinator has been able to work on strengthening our youth program. She has done a large amount of research to work on developing a high school program that follows Indiana Department of Education Graduation Guidelines. This includes meetings with partners that will improve the education assistance our program provides, such as IUPUI Student Success Corps. She has also met with many local organizations, such as Outreach Inc., to discuss partnering with their youth programming to create wraparound support for high school students. While we have not enrolled any high school students yet, the Education Coordinator has been working to discover what other high school programs offer and how they recruit students to develop our program. We anticipate that as our middle school students enter high school, they will begin to attend our high school programming.

We have also strengthened our middle school program thanks to this grant. Because we have a staff member dedicated to this program now, she was able to create partnerships with Cat Head Press and City Life Wheels. This has given our middle school students the opportunity to learn screen printing with hands on experience as well as learn basic car maintenance. Thanks to these programs, our students have been able to express themselves creatively, learn life skills, and develop self-confidence. Our middle school students now have a program dedicated to their wants and needs.