Grant recipients from the  Queen of Hearts Women’s Fund 2010

Big Brothers Big Sisters – $12,500 One of the most important factors in a child’s success in life is having solid, long term relationships with caring adults.  A mentor is someone who can introduce a child, and especially a lower income child, to opportunities and experiences they may otherwise not have.  But more importantly, through being consistent and caring, a mentor can provide a positive role model for a child, as well as encourage him or her to make good choices, succeed academically and thrive.  Youth from our community can be at risk for many negative behaviors – we have self reported gang membership rates as high as 16% for certain ethnic groups, well above the state rate of 9.6%.  We also have 62% higher arrest rate for juveniles versus adults in Nevada County, again an alarming fact.  With this grant, Big Brothers Big Sisters program will serve 10 additional children ages 6-18 by matching them with a mentor.  Extensive screening and training ensures that the mentor is well suited for the relationship, and the agency provides ongoing support to the pair.

Family Resource Center of Truckee – Community Legal Program – $12,500 Oftentimes the difference between stability and crisis for a family comes down to having knowledge of their legal rights.  Prior to the establishment of the Community Legal Program, residents of our region had essentially no access to low cost legal assistance.  In the few years that they have been operating, this program has served close to 500 families a year, allowing single mothers to receive child support, hourly workers to be paid thousands of dollars of unpaid wages, injured workers to get their worker’s compensation, and seniors to maintain affordable housing.  The program makes the most of local resources, including providing a setting for local lawyers to do pro bono work, and therefore they are able to run this program on limited funds.  This grant will sustain this program during a critical gap in funding.  In these economic times, the numbers of families facing financial crises has grown dramatically for all segments of our community as can be seen by the demographics of the legal program – half of their clients are Anglo and half Latino, with residents from all neighborhoods in the region, Glenshire to Kings Beach.

The Queen of Hearts Women’s Fund made its first grant in 2006.  Since then we have awarded $24,000 in grants.  Past recipients include:

• Adventure, Risk and Challenge Program (2007)
• Arts for the Schools (2008)
• Girls on the Run (2009)
• Humane Society of Truckee Tahoe (2008)
• InnerACTIONS (2009)
• Odyssey of the Mind (2009)
• Project MANA (2009)
• Nutrition Coalition (2006)
• Sierra Nevada Journey/Boys and Girls Club of North Lake Tahoe (2008)
• Tahoe Forest Hospice (2006)
• Tahoe Women’s Services (2008)
• Truckee Donner Land Trust (2007)